Burning Twice As Bright
by Delusional Fishies
Summary: Wake up sharing Azula's body, and the world is your playground.
1. Arriving as She Leaves

1.

Sometimes, you don't even know you're up. It's sort of like sleep walking, but not really. You know how, after years of working your ass off after graduating from university and your job, you wake up looking like a zombie because you usually pull late nights or just plainly suffer from insomnia? For the most part, the fuzziness is supposed to be a chemical thing. Instead, this morning it is a mental thing, on my part.

Because my body is moving on its own, and I don't even notice until I am already out of bed and standing in front of the mirror, combing my own hair. By then, I am awakened enough to notice several very startling facts.

Let's start from the bottom and the least shocking of the list, shall we?

My hair is longer than it should be. The bangs that I hate so much and never allowed to fall lower than my eyes now reach down to below my cheeks. The less I say about the back, the better, especially since my hands are quickly tying the loose, soft strands into a knot at the top of the back of my head. The consistency, the softness, the length, the thickness, and even the number are all so wrong. Nevertheless, I let out a soft hum in a tune I don't recognize as I finish tying the topknot.

I'm told my skin is awfully white for someone from California. I usually tell them in response that it's been years since I truly lived in southern California, and these years I spend in Beijing do not help. Now however, there is not even the barely noticeable tan line from wearing too many short-sleeved shirts. It's as if I had spent my life either in doors or in a place with barely any sun, or I am just so solar resistant now?

The most damning evidence of all is something utterly irrefutable.

Now, I'm a pretty tiny girl. I'm also Asian. But the tiny, Asian-esque girl who stare back at me with a deceptively charming smile is not me. It has not and cannot be me for the last… oh, fifteen or so years at least.

Ah, and of course, the pupils of my eyes are not supposed to be golden.

But that is enough time to stare at myself, it seems. A knife with an ivory handle—the self-defense weapon too opulent to be for anyone but a prince—slides into my palm. I find myself staring at it, marveling it, and thinking to myself these thoughts that do not belong to me, '_Today's the day things changes, Zuzu._'

Zuzu? Surprised, _I_ think loudly and forgetting the strange and out of context situation that I am currently in, '_And who is Zuzu?_'

My body freezes up instantly. Nothing makes a sound in this grand room. It's large enough for a princess, and larger than any child's room I've seen in my tours of Europe's manors and castles. Satin sheets and silk veils hang and sprawl all over the place in various hues of red and gold as my eyes sweep over the room. They dart left and right, these eyes not mine, belonging to a girl half my age. Yet I see through them, even as we speak in a hush whisper from one mouth, "Who's there?"

Nothing, not even a whisper, responds.

"… Mother? Is that you?" She asks as I flow and follow suit. There is a growl building up in our throat. It is caught there and held back by sheer willpower, all of hers and none of mine.

I would have just growled.

We look left and right again. Then we pocket the knife, and we _glide_ through the door. There is a confidence in our step that we both share. That much is true at least. Both of us feel like we own our little fiefs in the world, and perhaps all the world, one day. There is no spring in this step, and I do not even need to make an effort to move.

She whose body this belongs to moves for me. For the moment, I space out and think to myself. This has to be a strange, strange dream. People have these, don't they? They dream of being young again. I confess, I do, but I never really think I need to be this young. No, this is not my usual dream, so perhaps there is some significance in it being so vivid in sight and in touch.

As we draw closer to what must be a grand hall of a palace equal to the size and splendor of the _Gu Gong_—the Forbidden Palace—I think that this dream is even as vivid as life in its sense of taste and smell.

Breakfast is short. Perhaps it is because I find these functions boring?

Servants scrape and bow on all sides. Many of them are pretty, but only in the medieval sense with only crude makeup and cosmetics available. '_What a strange dream_,' I think to myself.

We pause again.

This time, we are more alarmed than before. Our heart beats quicken and our muscles tense up and loosen in a regular, eased pace. With such control over the body and such a functioning body, I have no doubts this is also a dream of being someone incredibly superhuman.

Do you ever visualize your fist breaking through a car window? Or do you ever see yourself leaping up and pulling off a slam dunk? Very few people can actually pull either off, and this indescribable feeling of utter control and power packed in this tiny, lithe body makes me feel like I can do all of that and more. It almost makes me believe in those silly sorts of stories about _Qi_ that some Chinese martial arts teachers speak of from time to time, as if it is some sort of _supernatural_ aspect of physical combat. Ha!

"Whoever you are, this isn't funny," We say, as we pick up the pace. Our voice quivers as does our lip, but _she_ covers it up so remarkably well, that even I barely notice.

It is almost as if she could hear my thoughts. What an amusing concept, I think silently to myself.

She is shaken by my thoughts, though that is understandable. No one will not be shaken if they start hearing a single other person's thoughts as they experience the world through their body. Which 'they' or 'their' this refers to is purposely ambiguous, because it feels like we are but one person, not two, as much as I think we ought to be.

It is strange that I don't struggle and fight as we jog down the halls at somewhere around twenty miles an hour. I, who prize my own freedoms so much, do not care? But you must understand, I still think this a dream.

The shocked numbness disappears by the time we stop before a door. Walking in is simple enough, and she thinks to herself loudly enough for me to hear, '_Looks like Zuzu is sleeping soundly. Rise and wake, dear brother…_'

The oaken door clicks to a close behind us.

A young man slumbers on the bed before us. It is equally frivolous, covered in what must be ten layers of red silk with gold embroidery. From the shine in the dim light, it might even be made of real, golden threads.

We walk to the windows, slamming them open, as a giddy feeling runs like a shiver down our spine. Does she take pleasure in the pain of her brother? It seems almost too petty to be a morning person just to mess with her brother Zuzu. Being privy to her thoughts, I realize that I missed something about it all. It is my presence and the surprising whispers that I bring to her mind which causes her to be here now. My dear host plans to confront her brother later, so why now?

Simple. She wants a sense of normality back, and for her it is the suffering of her brother that is normal.

He groans and wakes up, "Ugh… I told—Azula? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, silly Zuzu," She chortles with a hand lingering on the dagger which spins from one hand to the other. It is not expertise that allows her to do this, but simple, inherent dexterity. "Keep up with the times."

"W-What are you talking about?" The boy—so clearly not yet a man—scrambles out of bed without a single ounce of dignity. His feet slide into his red slippers as he tries to pull up and grab the knife from our hands.

Azula is our name. It sounds familiar.

We pull away just before he can reach us, and promptly allow the edge of the blade to knick his skin. It is a shallow cut that doesn't even truly draw any blood. Our eyes become downcast, as if we are truly pitying him, but the happiness that blossoms in our heart of hearts tells a nothing tale entirely. "Poor, poor Zuko. Don't you know not to reach for knifes like that, or you'll get cut?"

"Spit it out, Azula," He groans from his position on the floor. "What… did you hear something about Grandfather?"

"Did you just remember that?" The corners of our lips twitch upwards.

"What happened?"

"Oh, nothing much," We reply, turning away and playing with _his_ knife again. As we walk towards his door, we add, "Grandfather is dead, and mother's gone missing."

The sound of him audibly choking behind us does strange things to our body. "He… w-what?"

"Do get dressed, Zuzu. Don't want the servant girls, or Agni forbid Mai, to see you in your underwear, do you?" We let a last jab go, before we exit the stage that we prepared.

I have heard enough. I have heard enough to know who I am in this dream, and what a role we have. Oh, it is a delicious one.

As the towering oaken door shuts to a close, and Azula takes the first step away, I think again ad wonder, '_Is it really so fun, to make fun of such a simpleton? Where is the joy in that? Where is the fun in doing what it is you do, if it is only to someone as slow and weak as Zuko?_'

"W-Who's there?" She twirls around.

'_Sometimes, it is hard to remember that you are only ten years old._' I realize to myself. It is not a thought aimed for her, but it slips through my mental lips nevertheless. She doesn't act as she does in how I know of her, which is why it takes so long to recognize her. This Azula is still young, and without the half-decade of tutelage at being sadistic and cruel under her father's thumb. '_But sometimes it is so hard to forget._'

"Who are you?" She hisses more quietly, now sure of where I am, though unsure of where to turn. There is a rage in her tone, as small embers sprout out of her lips like sparks. And there is confidence, oh yes, so like my own.

'_I am the only one you can truly, assuredly trust._'

"Trust is for—"

'_I will _never_ fear you. But even so, more than your friends, more than your family, I am the one you can wholeheartedly trust._'

She scoffs and ridicule is at the tip of her tongue. It is so easy for her to find fault in my argument, for she is smart, and wickedly so. "Fool," She sounds so sure of herself now, now that her _opponent_ is replying and she can finally hit back. "There is no one like that."

'_Oh, but there is,_' I say, as if I had some hidden insight on the workings of the world. I don't.

"You lie," She smirks and twists on her feet, leaving.

'_Azula never fears Azula. You have only trust for yourself_,' I state, not lying, just implying.

"No." Our eyes are wide. Why?

'_Trust me. Trust yourself._'

I stay silent after that, no matter how she tries to refute my false implication. But it is true, of all the characters in this grand play, I do favor her the most. If this is my dream as it should be, then why will her fate turn out in any way but how I want it to? Moreover, this—unlike the torment of Zuko—is _fun_.


	2. Burning as They Teach

2.

Li and Lo demand perfection from Azula.

I stay silent, for the obvious reason that my influence will sooner stumble us than help us. There is a deeper reason to this mental and physical lack of action too; I do not know how to 'firebend'. Oh, I do know what martial arts are. I pride myself in being somewhat of a connoisseur of these physical arts, but it is never like this.

In our Earth, martial arts are either a form of performance or a form of breaking your opponent. Most of these things turned to sport are just flashy performances. If you can teach something like this to a child not even ready for elementary school and allow them to advance in rank, then it is more art than martial. Contrarily, to subdue or to break someone, now that is more martial than art. I am more brushed up on the art aspect, but I am a practical person; so I only really paid any attention to the aspect of our martial arts that has purpose beyond performance.

To see—to feel—Azula dance through her passionate forms is a thing of glory. It is equal parts art and violence, because it seems that a large part of even bringing the _Qi_ out into form is to perform. It strikes me as impractical, and it causes me to dig through my memory for the past lessons I learned. A frown creases our brow as I divert a large part of our mind to translating the philosophical bullshit and cryptic nonsense that so many teachers sprout. A small part of us is amused, because many of them are not native speakers of English, and they had not intended to be cryptic in the first place. They simple cannot help it—

'_But it makes sense_,' the larger part of us realizes.

'_What does?_' Azula is an intuitive learner, not needing me to prompt her to think her thoughts to me rather than to speak them aloud.

'_That thought plays a large part in our firebending. That there is purpose in taking the longer route, to make things pretty, than to take the quickest path to victory._' It makes me sad to realize styles like Wing Chun, and a great many that I know, are useless because they aren't flowery enough.

Not enough swirls and spirals and mimicry of Taoist symbolism for us to use, it seems.

'_That is foolish. You are… you're the dummy part of me, aren't you?_' She takes a quick breath. It is deep in comparison to her other breaths, but it is unbelievably shallow to us mere mortals. Then she flies into action again.

This is a beautiful display, and I find myself awed.

No, that is incorrect. I am not _awed_, I just spaced out from watching all the sparkly lights and bright fires. The display dazzles me into speechlessness, and moreover, I cannot but feel the rush of power. I'll admit, if I could truly do this in real life, I'd be a bit of a pyromaniac.

Hell, I probably am one, from the way I dream of this.

'_Then why don't you try to bend the heat in the air? Burn the earth and move it as one, boil the water and choke your enemies? You can't, because it is outside of your schools of thought._' I remark to her, not quite refuting that I too feel I am foolish. As sadistic as Azula might be, I must be equally masochistic to like her so much, in such _close_ proximity.

The _Qi_ in her hands surges and blossoms like a hundred and forty-four flaming, blue butterflies. Hot rage burns within her, causing her to simultaneously lose control and gain a sort of greater power. It is supposed to be a jab of orange fire. I know this because we have done it eleven times just now.

Our motions are the same as the last eleven times. Why is it that a moment's cold rage and black hatred surround us with these hundred, hundred azure embers?

I do influence her motions now, if nothing but to keep away from the fires. A jolt of fear shoots through my heart as I panic irrationally, even as Azula jabs again to regain control of the flying sparks. I force us to spin, to keep them away and to disperse the heat. They swirl around us as the world blurs and as we spin. Our feet are in motion, left, right, right, left, back, forth—this is all Azula. I do not have the footwork for this. Yet these are coordinated steps, where I can barely hold myself back from shrinking in fear of the heat that tickles our skin. We _spin_ and the dome of flashing blue spins with us. Only then do I realize that the fires are pouring from every pore on our body, and that we are surrounding our very self with a dome of fire. We are like a blue sun in the dark temple yard.

Then it all explodes outwards, with no singe on our body.

'_What. Are. You—_' Azula bears her teeth, trying to recoup the form that is broken.

'_You're the one with the power and passion,_' I retort accusingly and smugly. Our dance is a beautiful and frightening display, but also a fluke that we have not destroyed the yard.

'_Flatterer,_' She sounds amused.

It is easy to disseminate each flicker of flame now that I am not bedazzled. The more I press my sense of self upon our body, the more fluid and weaker the fires become. But this also means they are more manageable. And a even simpler deduction is made when I notice how swirls and spins, motions of _Tai Chi_ and of Taoist symbolism, direct the fires, rather than cause them to lash out.

'_I see_.' Our eyes widen just a fraction, but our heart skips a beat. And she does, because we only need barely a change of stance and a shift of weight from side to side to hold the hot, spinning dome in place. '_That was so simple. I know how to do that now._'

What a scary ten year old…

The azure flames spin around us, weaker than a single burst and thinner than flaming whips, like a dozen over lapping layers of burning lines making a mesh of fire. I find myself smiling as well, '_An immolating cloak. I wonder what possibilities this has._'

But a motion more and it dissipates.

Lo and Li are upon us immediately. One of them grabs the front of our head and makes a clicking noise under her breath, "Hair flying wild? Should we even bother giving you the best training, Princess?"

"And not only breaking stance, but to not attack further, Princess?" Which one is which, I do not know, but Azula seems to know.

There is a lot we can tell from a person's name.

_Shenwu _Li and _Shenwu _Lo are of a long lineage of spiritual advisors. They are of high ranking, as their names suggest, and descendent from a time when we had no temples and only village elders. Yet somewhere along the line some hundred years ago, their family adjusted from advising in the spiritual matters to advising in the matters of war.

After all, war is all that the Fire Nation knows anymore. The spiritual matters can be advised, but why can't war be spiritual?

'_That was…_' Azula frowned, unsure of how to proceed.

But she does. '_Go on._'

"Strategy is more than just constant offense," Azula tilts our head, just enough to be respectful but to also to still be mindful of our stations. Then blue fire burns, forcing Li and Lo back. It coils around us like a snake. "But sometimes, defense is the best offense."

We beckon with one finger, causing the fires to spin and the winds to pick up. The torches around the temple grounds flicker as they are eaten by a greater beast and hiss to darkness. This is more Azula than I. She so intuitively understands concepts of firebending, anything I try, she will understand.

How dangerous; she can tell exactly when my influence weighs even a feather heavier. This restricts me so much to keep up this fun charade.

"Enough."

The word is harsh and spoken simply, and we look up. A towering, monstrous figure stands at the top of the temple steps. He wears the robe of eightfold elegance, with gold on the crown of his head and a suave, clean goatee. His eyes glimmer in the dimness of the same colors as ours'. He is a dragon…

We fall to one knee out of habit, and Azula intones with a gleeful undertone, "Father."

I see why the moment I review the situation. Somehow, Zuko hides in his father's shadow so well that I have not noticed him. Only someone accustomed to him, such as Azula, would know where to pay attention. I suspect Zuko does have the aptitude to grow up to be some kind of Asian, firebending, sword wielding Batman. Ozai, on the other hand, has an overwhelming presence that overshadows everyone else, just by being there. I feel like I just met an evil Bill Clinton. I cannot help but shudder.

Or is it actually Azula shuddering happily to be in her Father's presence?

Ozai smiles thinly as we look raise our gaze to him. Only one of royalty is allowed; Li and Lo back off and scurry off into the corners of the courtyard. "See, Zuko? Your sister is inventing new techniques, as… different… as they may be. She is gifted in many things."

Zuko _almost_ whines. He holds himself back, but stands silently as decorum dictates.

"… On the other hand," Ozai mutters softly, without even looking at his son as he lashes out cruelly. "It is saddening to see you squander your only gift."

"Father?" Oh, come on, you can't be that dumb.

"Life," Ozai says as he walks away. "That is your only gift, and one that I regret giving. Come Azula, you must learn the intricacies of ruling, and I shall be holding court."

We spare Zuko a glance as we pass him up the steps and towards the road to the palace. How many times has he endured something like this? Nevertheless, even as Azula finds delight in this—and then questions herself, if she is wasting her time, because of my meddling—I feel apathy overtake any pity I have for Zuko. All your Father wants is for you to stand up for yourself, Zuko. It's so easy to see it now, from the perspective I have, and from my experience on how fathers and sons interact in Chinese culture. '_What a sad waste. Well, you have a couple years…_'

I don't spare him another thought for a long time to come.


	3. Taking as He Allows

3.

'… _This is boring_,' I remark at last.

As if a metaphorical dam has opened, Azula replies wholeheartedly, '_You think? They have no choice but to grovel. They are already submissive and dominated._'

'_Not Lieutenant Zhao,_' I point out. The man is suave in the way he navigates the court, but he is good at hiding his ambitious streak. I know better, of course, but he is currently only serving as a glorified secretary to General Shu.

'_That glorified secretary? Really?_' Azula does not sound disbelieving. Instead, she starts studying the man, to which she adds, '_Hm. Perhaps._'

The court is as grand as any Ancient China soap opera, with the Fire Lord Ozai sitting at the throne, behind a veil of fire. It is like how there is some kind of tradition in Japan where the Emperor is not allowed to be seen? I don't really remember how it went, actually. Nevertheless, only I am allowed within ten steps of the Fire Lord, partly for his safety and partly for my rank and station. At ten paces away, the great generals of the Fire Nations kowtow on one knee, with their hands clasped before them in respectful silence. Behind them are their retinues, such as a Lieutenant Zhao, whose eyes spark with a certain look that I don't like. The way he looks at me, at Azula, is entirely too creepy, when he thinks no one is watching. At twenty paces away from Fire Lord Ozai, the administrators kneel and state their reports. In a land dedicated to war, the civil servants do not rank as nearly as high as warriors, even if they are essential in the baggage train and logistics of the nation. Great lines of gold-gilded pillars line each side of the room, separating different factions of the court. Oh, yes, there are factions…

"The court acknowledges Governor Qiao," one of the servant sages intones. It is left unsaid that the man rising from his knees is one of those within the Bureaucrat Faction, which supports Ozai because they see him as a better candidate for the throne than General Iroh, who is supported by the Sage Faction.

The man sweeps his left sleeve and then his right, before straightening his robe, as is not just custom, but also seen as a stylish motion for able-bodied servants. His face looks straight-laced and his mannerisms prudishly dull, but from the way his eyes shone in the fire light, I think him not unintelligent.

"This Servant Qiao congratulates the Princess Azula on her achievement of the destructive art of Blue Fire," he says. It is what everyone is saying today in court, since I accidentally talked Azula into a moment of single-minded rage. It is also really dull because the last five speakers have said the same thing. "This Servant Qiao is pleased to report to his sovereign majesty, the Okina colony's academy's first batch of students have graduated. Of the two hundred and fourteen who go on to training camps, fifteen have tested well, achieving a place in the military schools of our glorious Capital."

'_How many are girls?_' I wonder.

'_Does it matter? They are captains at best._' Azula scoffs, so sure of herself that she leaves it clear that she does not know either.

I press a little and stand.

The court sage blinks in surprise, but nods after a moment, as Governor Qiao purses his lips and stops speaking as well. He turns to the Fire Lord Ozai, who smirks. Then the court sage speaks with the clarity that echoes through the chamber, "The court acknowledges the Princess Azula."

'_Why did you… I… why did we do that?_' Azula's jaw tightens, but she doesn't show any of the turmoil within.

I find myself smiling. "Honored Governor Qiao, I wish to inquire how many of the graduates are girls, and of those, who are the most promising, as I find my interest piqued, but I do not see your reports in my hands prior to this day."

"Princess Azula," He intones in the same dull pitch. "Of the graduating two hundred and fourteen, eighty-four are girls, and two are going on to the officer's school."

"Oh?" Azula raises an elegant brow at that, "And who are these promising individuals?"

Governor Qiao shifts slightly, but the reason for this becomes clear in a moment. "The promising female students are my daughters, Dai Qiao and Sho Qiao."

Ah, I understand. Nepotism, even if only perceived and not real, is often an uncomfortable topic in the meritocratic Fire Nation. It is likely that family tutors allow his daughters to test better than their classmates, and it is not a case of nepotism at all. My eyes gleam at the possibilities. '_We can get out of any shadows any others can cast upon us now, by using this resource at this opportune time._'

'_And how do you suppose we find the opportune time with so few and so green a company of recruits? None of them will know what to do, and few would follow a ten-year old into battle._' Azula knows exactly what I plan it seems, the astute, little lass.

'_But there are more ways to win a war than to fight. Wars can be won with money and food, and some out-of-context solutions._' I have no doubts that my companion is thinking of something utterly different than what I am planning, but I can see the gears in our mind turning.

'_Very well,_' Azula nods mentally. A flash of memory runs through her, a picture of Zuko and her mother. But the memory fades, too disinteresting for her tastes, even though she ought not be ready to let them go just yet.

We turn to Fire Lord Ozai, and we sweep our dress and kneel. "Great Fire Lord, I wish to ask a boon."

"Speak."

"I wish to form a special company with the recent graduates, and I ask for them and for officers, and a smith," I request.

He leans back and watches impassively. Well, he is such to bystanders, but from my close proximity, I can see how his lip twitches at this. "And why should I _give_ such resources to you?"

"Because I will return it a hundred fold, and because I wish to prove my competence in all matters, not simply firebending," We state truthfully.

He watches.

He waits.

It is a trick, I tell myself; a simple one that causes people to think him more profound than he is. But it works and I almost feel nervous.

"Very well," Fire Lord Ozai nods. "War Minister Qin, Governor Qiao, see to that Princess Azula is satisfied."

And thus we stand the next day, at the doors to a one of the many barracks outside of the Fire Capital proper, with just a single scroll of authority in our hand and only Li and Lo behind us. As we push open those heavy, wooden doors bound by dark iron, we stand witness to eighty girls standing in salute, with two of their numbers at their fore and four older officers to a side. '_Not a bad start, right?_'

'_Mhm…_' Our tongue ran against our upper lip in anticipation.


	4. Declaring as They Listen

4.

"Let me dispel any and all stupidity," I say once I have their attention. This happens quickly with the gold plate encased scroll in my hands, a mandate from the Fire Lord to form this company. "I have a list of you, and gathered the best of you _at my disposal_. Best and most promising in your fields, varied and spread out as you are. You thought you were going to learn from a master and go on, on your own, with barely any purpose? So... some of you think you're going to be a royal retinue. This may be so, once you prove your competence and loyalty. I will also reallocate those applicable with glowing recommendations."

It is tradition for the armies that royalty serve in and lead in to be brought higher honors, but it is also easily deducible that those _officers _who become a part of a royal retinue face no chance of promotions. To career soldiers, this is the death blow to their advancement and what kills motivation to get ahead. For those who are smart enough to read between the lines, they know what I am offering: a golden ticket to greater promotions.

Azula does not actually care; she didn't even want to add that additional line, originally. It does not benefit her to have _loyal_ and _competent_ soldiers leave her service.

She does not understand building a network, having only learned at Ozai's knee.

She understands building a core team. I do too. You can't achieve anything without a group of people. No one can do anything alone. But Azula does not understand a lot of things.

Azula isn't stupid. She knows and understands that the officers and junior officers of this _experimental _company are provided by and provided for by House Qiao, a minor merchant family that rose to prominence three generations ago when their grandfather tested into the top one hundred and gained the administrative rulership of a small town as its bureaucratic magistrate. Since then, and since bureaucratic titles are not hereditary, they have been growing to the rulership of a colonial island in the southern Earth Kingdoms region. Azula knows these facts and understands that the House Qiao is financing this venture not for its own sake, but for the sake of becoming closer to the royal family.

What Azula does not understand is why I am bothering subverting these eighty girls' loyalty when the Fire Nation's advanced propaganda machine already insures they obey us. Why do I bother spending these extra specks of time for these insignificant plebs?

In a phrase, I am playing the long game while she only lives the short one.

After all, what is the cost of writing a letter, giving a smile, and speaking a few extra words to another loyal servant? This is my dream, and if by this means I raise each and every one of them to a point where I can know all of their faces and names, then all of them are raised above faceless minions.

But that is just one of the many reasons and motivations at play.

"We will see combat," I add. "But we are not a part of the military structure, even if we are organized in part like one. Ladies, as much as I might love war, we are not in that business."

This causes more stirs than the first announcement. It has nearly caught Azula by surprise too, but she sees my reasoning, and ultimately agrees.

In this, we see eye to eye.

Some girls are relieved to not be in the frontlines. They have a _ten-year-old, untested royalty_ as commander; of course they have reason to worry. Some express their emotions with frowns, because they want to earn promotions. Or perhaps they just like fighting and have been expecting it.

So why do we pull this on them then, first to promise them rewards if they prove themselves, then remove the opportunities for proving themselves? We both see easily into their train of thought this way.

"You will see trade." Azula then speaks, "But we are not a trade company, even if we will see profits like one. We all want to see our great Fire Nation prosper, but it is not through trade."

Then what are we to do?

Why, there is much to do, and none of this is to spread our talent widely like we have so far laid out.

And this is where things get tricky, and Azula leans on me.

"So let me dispel these rumors. You are not a military police, an internal squad like the Earth Kingdom's whispered Dai Li. You are not courtesan spies, or any other such a force. We will do those things, perhaps, when the opportunity allows. You will spy, you will police, you will administrate, but this is not an organization for any of those individual things!" I then ask, "So tell me, ladies, what is our business? What is the business of the Fire Nation?"

They are young still, even the officers. None of them are older than twenty, and all of the graduates are but fifteen years old. Azula wants to assert her dominance, by finding the strongest of them, pushing them to challenge her authority, and utterly and brutally destroy that girl in an Agni Kai that will cow all of them into submission. But here their youth is to be used against them.

To be so young, they must have, at most, only a taste of war. They have not yet been subsumed into conflict—to be on the other side of the world, fighting in ditches or swamps or snow, smelling only the worst excrements of humanity and sleeping with rats and insects, fighting without actual food or cleanliness for weeks on end—only a few battles close to home at most. They still believe in the propaganda of the Fire Nation.

They still believe in us. They want to believe in us. Everything that they are tells them they _need_ to believe in Azula and her righteous cause.

So let us give them one.

'_But that is so amateurish, to do that alone. It can be a part of the plan, but the plan is larger than just that,_' We discuss, not for the first time. I wonder if I am actually arguing with myself sometimes, being in this dream of mine.

'_And what does the other side of me say?_' Azula asks, also not for the first time.

"A surgical strike force is not a new thing; we have the Yu Yan Archers, we know the Dai Li, and espionage is not new to us. So we take things one step further, we make a better model of operations and we use our resources to link it all together to not just have a surgical strike force, but also find exactly what sort of touch is necessary. We have but one business that we have set out to accomplish a hundred years ago. It is a noble goal that brings prosperity to all peoples and that goal has guided us to become the strongest and richest in the world. I have in my hands a mandate from the Fire Lord, endorsed by the Sages, the Bureaucracy, and the Generals." I hold up the golden case that holds the scroll of Ozai's script. It is embossed with the dragon and the phoenix, and its sheen catches every eye in the barracks courtyard. "'We who are the head of the body of the Fire Nation dictate the founding of this company, answerable to only the Royal Princess Azula.' So, we have but one goal. It is that which brings the world into one union."

Our eyes sweep over the girls. Somehow, through Azula's natural and trained presence than from any action on my part, we have their undivided attention. Their feet must ache as much as ours, to stand so still, for so long.

So we declare, "Girls, we are not in any of individual aspects of the parts of our fine nation, as important as they may be. We are a whole and representing the best of us all. We are in the finest business in the world, the only business that we have worked for, for a hundred years. We are in the business of world domination. You will train to be the best, you will prove yourself loyal, and we shall strategize and plan and seek opportunities, without limits and with a single purpose. Thus I announce the founding of my Royal Order of the Crown's Inquisition."


	5. The Path is Found

5.

'_You're not the dummy part of me. You're the boring part._' We groan—for different reasons—in unison. It isn't hard to be bored after spending the last eight hours reading reports—filled with words that I do not know how to read, I might add. The only solace I can take in these piles of paperwork is how disillusioned with the world and humanity Azula is becoming with each case we deduce.

Touching my cheek with one hand with utter tenderness brings an entirely new sensation to our skin. You know that phenomenon when you touch your skin, you feel little because it's you, right? And if someone else touches that same place, suddenly you're feeling a hundred different things you aren't ready to feel… I don't even remember what it's called.

It works though, for us. If my influence moves that hand, I can feel the nerves lighting up as if on fire within us as a part of Azula's reactions. It's… I guess it would be weird to say that I felt like I was pleasuring myself, in a totally platonic way? How little human contact Azula must have, to be left shivering, breathing hard, and with butterflies and a quivering heart, just from such simple, tender touching? It helps that she's so young, and thus she has not yet lived long enough to be desensitized. '_Would the boring part of you really bring you so many new experiences? I'm the part of you that compliments you; we are marvelous already, but together, more so._'

"You say that, but all we're doing is depressing ourselves," Azula complains with a grumble.

We are in the main offices of the barracks, which we have on lease for the next week, before we set off on our first mission, whatever that may be. There is no one here, but if we speak loud enough, our adjutants Dai and Sho will charge in. Sho is still too eager and unbroken, and her older sister still acts too superior.

We will have to fix that eventually.

"Fine, fine, let's look back at the Omashu report," We turn back to the pile. This is the reports of new, dissident activity that is occurring, where there is also the greatest opportunity.

"Omashu…" Azula's eyes flicker over it. She reads faster than me. I am practiced in simplified Chinese, but the script being used to this day is still traditional, and thus I have to decipher so many words. Some do not even exist. Did you know badgermole in this language is not written as 'badger and mole', but as one entirely new word that does not exist in Chinese? Azula finishes skimming the page before I finish the third paragraph. "I see… not much. We haven't conquered the place, and it only sells a trickle of weaponry to the Red-Omashu Trade Company. What is it that I missed?"

'_Money. Follow the money._' I point our eyes towards the profits.

'_What of it? They make great profit for… so few shipments…_' She begins to _see_, but not completely.

'_And? What do they sell to Omashu?_' I prod on.

'_Cabbages and fish, but that isn't too strange. Omashu is mostly a mountainous region with little farmland, if it is closed off… but then they have their underground mazes for sneaking in._' Our forehead creases with a frown. '_So? They're extorting the enemy civilians. That isn't…_'

I find myself chuckling, "Come now. Do you see the profit numbers? Converted on current market prices from the fish lost per shipment in the Crescent Island Pirates report, the price of the lost cabbages alleged by the cabbage merchant's complaints, and look at the profits… see this?" I scribble down some numbers in cursive Chinese. "With an operational input of 2,500 kilograms of silver and the costs of 15 kilograms per year, they issue a profit of 750 kilograms this year. They report it as… look, the Red-Omashu Trading Company has stock trading in the Capital, and it lists a constant growth of a three-year growth pattern of 33%, 35%, 28%, and 39% every quarter. This might be so for the first operating year, but for the past twenty eight years and consistently?"

"… What are you… what are we getting at?" Our eyes sharpen and squint.

I want to scream Ponzi scheme, but we have no proof. This can be big… because the company is making quite a few other established trading companies upset by shaking up the established, relatively peaceful way of things in the court, and with the new money flooding in from somewhere, they will need to take an aggressive stance on the war to maintain the façade, even if these are real profits.

No, people constantly pushing for war, and thus establishing a blossoming military industrial complex outside of our reach is never a good thing…

"We should investigate them," I mutter cautiously.

"That isn't easy. War Minister Qin is one of their major shareholders," Azula notes. But her interest is piqued. She licks our lips. "This can be interesting."

"If our intuition is right, then outing a corrupt bureaucrat will show our prowess to everyone in the court. This would not be fighting prowess, but the prowess of administration." I keep to myself that even if we don't find what we do go in for, there is the matter that they don't even use double-entry, so there's going to be someone laundering money. Considering that they are also a trading company that operates in a warzone which the Fire Nation only controls about 18% of the province…

Well, even if not this, we'll find someone doing something bad.

'_This still feels like something beneath me,_' Azula sighs after we pen in our intentions.

'_Of course it is. But just because a bug is beneath you, it does not mean mosquitoes will not bite you._' When in doubt, agree. Always agree. Agreeing is the best way to show that you are so similar, in addition to sharing the same body and voice, even inside the head.

'_We should squash the bug then_.' Blue fire blossoms in our fingertip.

I quench it, having come to understand the usage of flames better now. At the very least, I can control the _Qi_ within, even if I can't produce as powerful flames as Azula. '_If we go in, killing everyone, burning down all of their operations bases…_'

'_I'm not stupid,_' Azula rolls our eyes. I'm so proud; she learned that gesture from me just after three times.

'_But if we have irrefutable proof?_' I ask, allowing her to form the idea on her own and believe it hers.

'_Then father will allow us free reign over these traitors._'

Well, close enough.

Really, do we even have time to torture financial thieves, of all people? I sigh as we set to work immediately. There is a lot to do, after all, to coordinate our efforts.

The best skill which I impart onto Azula, or so I hope, is the ability to delegate and manage our resources. Of the one hundred and twenty members of our fledgling organization, forty-seven are fire benders. Fifteen of the one hundred and twenty are officers of one kind or another, logistics, tactics, cavalry, navy, night-fighting, resource management, paperwork and that sort of secretarial aide. It's a good number for training the rest.

Fifty of my girls are sixteen year old trainees entering for the sake of combat trained in fighting on ships, cavalry, and in darkness. Fifteen of them are non-bending archery specialists. Of the rest, fifteen are artists, artistic craftsgirls, secretaries, and the sort with miscellaneous skills. Ten more are originally career bureaucrats, from moderately well-off merchant families. These ninety are all educated finely with our Fire Nation's academies in combat, mathematics, scripts, history, and basic engineering and sciences, though some of them will not see combat at all.

The remaining thirty are more common girls chosen because they only attended basic schooling for mathematics and language, but their family had no money to pay for advanced schooling. They are our girlpower. I refuse to use the term 'manpower' for them! Anyway, they volunteer for several years in the local militia to have some funds for themselves, but now they have a purpose.

All of them have spent at least six years in informal training and four in formal training and drilling 'self-defense'. In the Fire Nation, our girls are as skilled in combat as our boys, after all. The entire structure of our numbers is that a vast majority of us are more educated than the average citizen. And that is what we want; we will use every force multiplier in every way available to us, for every operation. And it is such a waste to throw my girls into a meat grinder…

… And more importantly, with experience and training, we can become a much more formidable group operating within the system.

"Sho, Dai," We call. "Li, Lo."

They enter. Sho hops in, while Dai saunters in, as if she owned the place. I have little doubts that her family actually does own this barracks. The two older crones come to our side quicker, but no less haughty. It's also as if they are instructed to pressure Azula into working for impossible perfection.

"Princess Azula," They bow, as is customary.

I hold up the gold case, immediately giving my words the authority of the Fire Lord, rather than the Fire Princess. "Li, Lo, you will instruct, but not obstruct. Have twenty girls be given new identities, from every corner of the Fire Nation. They are to become employees in the Red-Omashu Trading Company. Get our officers to have dossiers made of everyone in the company, I want profiles of everyone from janitors to the Chairman Sato. I want to know what their vices are, when and where they sleep, and their every secret. Be discreet. This is on your heads."

Shenwu Li and Lo bow, receiving the word of the Fire Lord, and do not dare question Ozai. I do not let go of the scroll, and thus they do not dare question us _yet_. But we know their questions. They will ask why do we target the complaint filer rather than the general in charge of pacifying the region, or just go straight for seeking out the rebels in the region. They think so small, and they think we do not read between the lines.

"Why bother?" Dai whispers to Sho.

They giggle like the teenage mean girls that they probably are. Or maybe they aren't, but they certainly picked it up somewhere.

Our glimmering, golden eyes dart towards them.

Something snaps within me.

They think just because they are older and stronger, they can expect any sort of groveling from me that they have had from all their underclassmen back in their little provincial island? Or do they think that they do not need to be serious, here in private, with a ten-year-old princess?

Azula takes us forward a step, but I nearly growl, causing blue embers to leak from the corners of our lips. "Dai, you seem to not understand the reports you brought me this morning. According to the intelligence gathered by the three neighboring trade companies, the Red-Omashu Trading Company earns every three months about as much as half of the city of Omashu does in a year. How long do you think it will take for them to have the money to simply buy the court into invading Omashu and expand to hide their indiscretions that will soon cause their entire structure to fall apart if they do nothing? I give them five years. Two years, if they aren't airheads like you two are acting like."

She titters back, as if I am speaking a foreign language to her.

Maybe I am.

"Then again, it seems like all I've done all day is spend my hours pent up in this office." Azula stretches us a little, making the most comfortable feelings to happen in our body. '_I'm going to do it._'

'… _Fine. Don't overdo it. Scarring isn't pretty._'

'_Of course!_'

"Come, Dai, Sho," We beckon as we step into the courtyard where our girls are drilling. "It seems I must first prove myself. This can be a good learning experience for us all."

It certainly will be educational for every one of them.


	6. Burning the Path Ahead

6.

We duck low. Our back bends forward and we allow a stream of fire fly above us. Then we throw ourselves to our right, spinning, while throwing up a blade of blue fire up from the ground.

This is harder than I thought. We are barely able to keep up with Dai and Sho at the same time.

Not for the first time since we began this fight, I berate myself for thinking this Azula is the same unmatched Azula who defeated the Avatar Aang at turns left and right. She is talented compared to the average firebender. She might even be exceptional. But we are not developed enough. We are just beginning to explore blue fire—the explosive flames that are more solid than those orange-red streams that are flying left and right and above us.

Dai and Sho quickly learn that their individual fires cannot overpower Azula. With my influence mimicking Azula's our fires explode out of our hands. It seems like I have _Qi_ of my own, though mine is much less than Azula's, I think. Going all out with our attacks, we easily fill half the courtyard with blue heat, even if much of it barely tickles the girls who are watching from a distance.

But those bursts are few and in-between, and leave _me_ barely able to keep conscious.

Azula is doing barely any better. Just because our individual flames can overpower, this does not mean we can endure having twice as many heated missiles slamming into us. As with most firebenders, we are nigh-immune to fire as long as they are below a certain degree of… spiritual power, or perhaps heat? I don't know. All I know is that for every blast we block while standing still, three get through our defenses. They hit us like jabs and they _hurt_. It might also be that Azula is blocking their attacks, but they come too close for comfort if they still impact like slingshot rocks. I don't understand enough and I haven't observed enough to know the difference.

'_We're going to be bruising tomorrow morning,_' I note idly as we roll again.

'_Less talky, more fighty_,' Azula barely retorts before turning her attention back to the fight.

The twins are good. I doubt they are going all out, just as we aren't trying to kill them. Instead, they are playing the game of 'area denial'; for every attack I get off, they now purposely shoot weaker hits that dissipate almost twice as quickly as their previous flames. When you can't move sideways or up, or even forward, you will be pushed to a corner.

I twitch our nose, and notice the flickers that twitch in response. It works? Interesting… Thankfully, this does not affect Azula's concentration as she pushes back against the sisters. I lament, '_This wouldn't have been so bad if we just kept it as a sparring match. Never _had_ to turn it into Agni Kai_.'

Azula doesn't respond; I have the distinct impression she isn't happy with complaints.

Fine, '_Charge up, I'll keep up defense._'

Azula dips her chin in assent and the ground blurs. It still amazes me how quickly we run. It also amazes me how Azula instinctively trusts me and acts as if she knows what I plan to do. Again, I remind myself, this is not the Azula who develops into the character that I know; this is a real person… and a ten-year-old at that.

I twitch our nose and lips again, like that one olden days television show about that witch or something that got remade with Will Ferrell. I don't remember what it's called.

A crude shield appears before us. It is barely large enough to be a mask than a shield; but it is fire and it blocks their weak shots. They don't react immediately with heavier blows, but that is simply because Dai and Sho rely on their innate talent for faster bursts to intimidate fights to an end; they don't have experience to react instantly. Azula is just that talented to be so quick, and I have some fifteen years of martial arts on my side.

It is an extra boon how powerful blue fire is. They don't really emphasize on this in the show, but our fire is not only more explosive—and thus more dangerous—but it is also more solid, which makes it a wonderful defensive capability. The difference is if we are blocking an arrow, the traditional firebender must either exude a fire hot enough to turn the arrow into ash, dodge it, or make a heat wave hot enough to turn the arrow, where as our fire can outright block it; after the trail dissipates, the arrow just falls to the ground as if the wall it just struck turned into air.

All of this allows me to use our feral facial expression to make a spearhead which causes Dai and Sho's fires to wash over us like water.

At the same time, fire snakes out of Azula's hands like conical flamethrowers, pushing the sisters to stand back-to-back as they block with their weaker fires.

As we close in from ten paces to two in that single second, we roar in premature triumph.

It is enough to shoot the blue fire we held before our eyes forward. I am all for a little drama, so I shape it like a dragon's head. Well, I try, but the edges dissipate before it flies even one pace, leaving only a maw of blue fire to wash over the Qiao sisters. It looks sort of like the jaws of a great white shark in blue fire; you know the skeleton-type sort that some beaches have hung up here and there?

Unlike how we stand bruised but unburned, the sisters clearly caught on fire from that flaming jaw attack. They yelp, but Azula waves and the fires fall off of them. '_No scarring, hm?_'

'_It takes more than fear to earn respect. You have to give it. Hold your hands out to them._' I instruct, though a sense of something warm blossoms in my chest. Is that pride I feel for Azula?

'_Why? They can pick themselves up._' Azula is honestly confused by that. But then the undertone of Ozai's teachings rears its ugly head. '_And besides, they're losers._'

'_It doesn't take you anything, but it'll make them like you._' Feeling that I am not getting through to her, I try a different tactic. It's a simpler one, but one that works on me when I was younger, if nothing else. '_Look, this earns about as much obedience as frightening them ten times, and it barely costs you anything… wouldn't they like you more than Zuko instinctively because of something like this?_'

Azula pouts mentally, '_Fine._'

We approach as Qiao Sho picks up her sister, and we lend a hand. "Good match."

Qiao Dai looks away, either prideful or sheepish, we can't see. Sho, on the other hand, begins to smirk. "I can see why you're a princess. Is everyone in your family as good?"

"No, my brother's…" Azula makes a face.

"Ah. Well, I can see why they call you a genius. Sorry about the… thing. It's just we thought we'd be babysitting you or something," Sho has the decency to look away from our stare as she says this.

I smile—my will to smile overpowers Azula's will to frown anyway. "You can see I don't need babysitting. I need competent officers. Can you do that?"

Sho ponders on this, clearly not seeing my meaning.

Dai does. "We didn't cheat on any tests. We crammed our butts off, we can put a ship together, we can run a business, and we can differentiate different fuels. Archery, bending, hand-to-hand, stealth, riding, you name it, we can do it. We're the best of our class."

"Really?" We smirk as one. Then we raise our voice, so that the whole courtyard can hear us, "We will be holding a series of contests tomorrow. The winners will become the company's champions, for defending our honor… but those winners shall also be invited to the court for the royal end-of-the-year celebrations."

That gets the hush whispers going, some more than others, and it sounds like an echo with so many girls suddenly interested. After all, who doesn't want to meet a prince charming?

Too bad the only prince is… Ugh…

We pat both Qiao sisters on their shoulders, sliding our hands down to their elbow. It's a simple form of showing that we are not holding any grudge against them. "Good fight," we say again. "Now be more professional, because if you were serving under a different officer, you'd have lost your career."

Sho sound stricken, "Um. Oh. Oh! I'm sorry, uh, ma'am!"

We chortle, "Princess works. Or you can address me as commander while we're here."

"Um, right, Princess," Sho mutters. Why is her face red?

We touch her forehead for a moment, just to check. It looks a bit silly, I think, because we have to stand on tip toes to reach Sho's forehead.

Huh, nothing. Weird.

"Take care of yourselves and standby for further instructions. Li, Lo," We call to our attendants. "Divide up the officers, will you? We left separate stacks of dossiers on our table, use that as reference. We will be splitting operations between the home islands and the Omashu territory."

"Is that wise?" Li asks.

"And so early?" Lo adds.

Drat. The scroll is back at the office. We spin to them, knowing that they will be questioning us every step along the way. "You will do as you are told, or be removed permanently. But you raise a valid point, why do we bother having operations in two locations? Why do we split our attention to the two places that the organization we are investigating have headquarters in? _Why are you two being so irritable?_"

From the looks on their faces, this must be the first time Azula has so blatantly spoken back to them. Whatever, I don't care about two old crones who can't even see whose star is rising.

"Make sure to have half of the agents purposely flunk their entrance into the company to make sure the others get in. Have those who flunk start setting up a place of operations and surveillance of their area, and handle any information our insiders get. I want our combat squad to run messages between them and us, and I want no actions being taken until we have a complete spread of control over the information within the company. Most of all, I want to know where the money is coming from, who handles it, and where it's going." We pause in our step, turn back and see Li and Lo following us as if they are following Ozai. Good. It's time to turn their little conditioning act back on them. "Well? What are you waiting for? Get to it!"

'_Now then…_' Azula muses as we walk into our quarters. '_How did you bend without… bending?_'

'_After all that, that's what you want to know? I did it because while we are different sides of a coin, you are obviously the dominant personality._' I roll our eyes.

'_Obviously,_' she blinks and sighs. '_Fine, let's not worry about that. I think I already figured out how we did that. How are we supposed to pay for all of these operations though? We only have the funds of a military company, and that's already used for the rations, equipment, wages…_'

'_Isn't that obvious? We use the Red-Omashu Trading Company's money._' We giggle. Then we see Sho and Dai standing aside awkwardly for some reason. "What are you two standing around for? Isn't it dinner time? I'm rather famished!"


	7. Something Forgotten at Home

7.

We stand at the harbor of the colony which House Qiao administrates. It is of a moderate size. Over fifty fishing boats that each carries less than ten people at most, some dozen or so junks, and a single ironclad galley are docked here. Several thousand people are bustling up and down the hill leading from the pier to the town with all sort of crates, wagons and carts. There is a stinking smell of fish and oyster here and it causes me to crinkle our nose. Rather than disgusting Azula, however, it causes her to feel a tinge of hunger. Maybe it's because it smells like blood-in-the-water?

Due to our cold headdress and armored retinue, we are given relatively wide berth. It is just enough that I can see the girls aren't getting knocked into the water. The ship we are taking is actually a junk, which is anything but _junk_ in actuality. There is a sort of flavor to the ship, for its sails spread so wide and its color so vibrant. It reminds me of one of the ships I saw in Hong Kong when I first visited as a child.

"Princ—er, Commander? May I have permission to speak freely?" The girl beside me, clad in light scale and soft leather, stutters with a quiver. She is one of the twelve who are accompanying us as we board the ship to the Capital. It pleases us that our presence makes her so afraid to speak, but it pleases me more that she is willing to ask questions.

Azula almost replies instinctively before I can stop her, '_No._'

"Granted," I grumble. '_Do you want stupid minions or smart companions? It's not like they even _can _question you for the sake of hurting you; the most they can do is help you figure out if our plan has any problems._'

"Why are we going back to the Capital? Shouldn't we go to Omashu?" The girl asks almost too naïvely. But then again, she is only sixteen years old.

I turn to the _shangdengbing_ and see her fellows watching on carefully. It feels good to know that they are as intelligent as I thought them to be when I chose them. When I stand in this cesspool of a pier they call a dock and have the ten different scents of urine and feces assail my senses, it is all too easy to forget that they are individually as intelligent as modern day people. Sure, they aren't as well educated and they aren't nearly as developed industrially, but humans are humans no matter how you look at it. In fact, since most high ranking officers in the military (males) choose to promote or train people who are similar (other males), it is easy to see that I have the cream of the crop. Why the Fire Nation, which treats women and men equally in the military, does not crack down on such sexist behaviors is a mystery to me, but who cares, right? I'm benefitting…

S_hangdengbing_ Lin and her eleven troops are actually not anyone spectacular. Of the twelve, only Lin and two others are firebenders. Three others are archers, but the rest are—were—suppose to be regular shield-wall-and-spear troopers. Sneaking a peek at their language and mathematics scores, I lament how wasted their talents are by this (relatively) inefficient Fire Nation bureaucracy. We are choosing to teach them double-entry bookkeeping and other accounting tricks and Azula will teach them basic legalese and legal tricks she learned from Ozai on this boat trip.

In the end of a long discussion between Azula and me, we want to start nurturing an army of accountants and lawyers, auditors and inspectors. The Inquisition has to diversify somehow after the war ends, doesn't it?

"_Shangdengbing _Lin," We address her professionally. They are small things, recognition and acknowledgement, but Azula's eyes zoom immediately upon how the older girl's shoulders straighten ever so slightly. "I trust Li to teach Sho and Lo to teach Dai, and the reverse as well. We are going to the Capital because we require… additional resources and knowledge."

'_That's a nice way to say we don't trust Li and Lo to plot together._' Azula muses, '_Sparing the sisters was a weak decision, no matter how you look at it._'

I resist an urge to sigh mentally. She hasn't let this go for the past twelve hours. '_They owe us their lives. They know this: we can finish them off at any time. This means we can let them keep Li and Lo on track. Anyway, all four of them are competent enough, however you look at it._'

'_Then why not send them to Gaoling?' _Azula asks. There is a spark of curiosity in her.

The funny thing about that is that there is a Gaoling in China. That Gaoling is one of the more industrious prefectures of China, though out of the way. It so happens our Gaoling is similar. But what makes this Gaoling so special, aside from it being the residence of Beifong Toph, is that it is a center of commerce for mineral resources, near the mouth of a river and a bay, and it is in a wonderful location for domination of the southern-most hemisphere. Oh, Omashu and some other places are certainly better, but none are as nearly as rich or developed. In the short term, what little infrastructure they have and what little industrial culture they have makes them much more valuable than towns like Kiyoshi Island. That said, I reply to Azula, '_Because Gaoling is only a temporary headquarters. You know that; we're just trying to feel out the location._'

'_We're still spreading ourselves out too much_,' Azula grinds finally.

I hum noncommittally. She does have a point; we are moving too fast. As most successful investors will say, there is nothing to fear from moving too slowly.

We just don't have the time for that.

"Hello, Captain Guai," We say as we step onto the ship. "Ready to depart?"

Captain Guai looks more like an onion smuggler than a civilian vessel captain, but I don't judge much by looks. There is an air about him that smells of the sea, even when he is on land. He is curt in that same way, rumbling but gentle. "Depart? Already, milady? The lads haven't had their fill!"

That is the problem with contracting civilian vessels. Sure, three are used; one is for Li and Sho, one is for Lo and Dai, and finally, one is for us. Two are on their way to their destination now, and we are merely here to see them off, while picking up some supplies that are 'gifts to the new company from House Qiao'. It might be a sort of bribe to keep his daughter alive, a way to curry more favor, or something else. I don't know, but it will help sustain the company until we're done. Still, these civilian boats are patriotic enough to offer us discount rates, and we would not hinder the war effort by taking a military vessel, despite our importance.

We are still in home waters, after all, and all military vessels are busy catching Water Tribe scum.

There is little about the Qiao Colony that is great; in fact it is rather droll and quaint. I know I am using my own biases of modern development, but Azula feels the same way as I on this matter. It so happens she spent her life in the most developed city of the Fire Nation, so that might have something to do with it. We just want to leave as quickly as possible. Still… "Fine, we leave at noon then."

Then I step into our cabin below decks, ignoring any of the inconsequential complaints and bickering of the crew authoritatively. '_Yeah, respect my authority._'

Most of the girls do not actually know why we are so focused on Omashu or the Red Omashu Trading Company. They think it's because we're trying to help the company push for domination of the region. After all, if taken, there is but a single bastion left in the Earthen Kingdoms. Oh, there will still be fortresses, towns, and small spreads of rich manors, but there will be no more walled cities to stand before us. So it does not come as a surprise to me when Lin asks, "What resource is at the Capital that is so dire, Commander?"

Azula resists the urge to growl. It is close though, because she has been repressing the urge to tell everyone to shut up for hours now. I answer for her, "Oh, I want to ask my friend Kang Mai to join us."

"I understand," Lin nods.

"No, no you don't," I reply immediately.

"Commander?"

"Her father, Kang Cao, is the largest shareholder and one of the initial seed investors of the Red Omashu Trading Company. He is also a man who wants to climb the marble steps… It stands to reason that we must align our interests," I say at last. It will not do to reveal too much, too soon. Mai's father's ambition is known well enough in the court circles; it is expected someone as well-educated and rich as him will be entering the royal court as a governor or a magistrate sooner than later.

All the gossip we hear says this.

But what side is Mai's father on? And which side will Mai be on?

I find my lips curving as we muse. Maybe it is bad lighting of the lower cabins or the waves rocking the junk, but our dear escorts look like they shivered as they watched and waited for their expected lesson in the art of paperwork. '_Well, let's not keep them waiting._'


	8. Mai's House

8.

Unlike what you might think of Ba Sing Se's separation of classes with huge, imposing walls, this phenomenon in city building is not unique. The only difference is that the Fire Nation Capital does not actually have walls separating each 'ring'.

It once did a long time ago, when the Fire Nation was called the Fire Islands and were made up of a dozen or so feuding warlords. But that time has passed millenniums ago, and we have long since taken apart the three layers of walls for building materials. It has been centuries since our naval military might was weak enough to allow armies to land, after all.

The walls that remain are smaller and more for show than practical walls. Those areas we cleared of walls are then turned into giant, functional, and dual-level roads. The top level is just for pedestrians and is very small at that, because we have not yet the engineering and materials capacity to make such sprawling roads for wagons and carts to ferry easily. There is even a new, fourth ring road now, outside of which we have many of our key industrial manufactories on the capital island. That road is a legacy of the era when the war fell into a lull for a decade after the then-Prince Iroh was born.

House Kang is in the second ring of the Fire Nation Capital. It denotes that they are rising in the ranks of military or bureaucracy, because merchant houses are not considered one of the noble professions (in fact, like in much of Chinese culture, mercantilism and trade is often considered below the ranks of peasantry who produce agriculture, since unlike food, trade is not necessary for human life). Mai's house, as we affectionately label it with excessive possessiveness, is not lavish like many of the other families that have newly come into power or wealth and sought to prove themselves by massive patronage to the industries, troops, and social welfare for families of the enlisted. However, it does share a similar style, which is the _Shiheyuan_—the Chinese quadrangles.

The _Shiheyuan_ are housing complexes that can hold many families, with a main gate painted in red and guarded by a thick, red set of twin pillars, facing south as is most _Fengshui_. Of course, it is also common logic, because the winds that the Chinese suffer from the most are northern winds—though the Fire Nation Capital suffers more of a southern wind, and thus most gates are built facing the north. Here, a main house on the south side of the vast, square-shaped complex, while cousins and concubines usually live in the smaller, shorter structures that line the east and west sides of the complex and the servants live at near the gates. For moderately wealthy complexes such as Mai's house, there is a second gate on the inside.

As we enter the first gate, I marvel at how far this man has come. He tested up from the ranks of the military into a bureaucratic position, allowing him both power in the administration and power in the army. This means that Mai's father is not only competent in one field, but at least three. Why three? While the Fire Nation is a meritocratic nation by many means, anyone who wants to anything higher will also need to be proficient in swimming the court politics, network with the correct people, make friends and influence the right people. It is not to say that Mai's father is a particularly powerful official—his presence is not mandatory in the royal court, after all.

Still, he has wormed his way into a powerful position under the Ministry of Finance. It is perhaps there that he gained all of his money to invest into the Red Omashu Trading Company, which then implies he is invested in the complete conquest of Omashu and monopoly of its resources.

And what powerful position does he have in the Ministry of Finance? Why, we can find him leaving the office of the secretaries and entering the courts these days as the Superintendent of Iron Production.

And if I must say it out plainly, for a nation that needs iron for its army and navy, this makes Kang Cao a powerful man indeed.

'… _But I'm still unsure of what he wants,_' I remark not for the first time.

'_What do all men rising in power want? They want permanency of their status, respect of their peers, and no attention from their superior,_' Azula wonders good-naturedly, even though we both have no use for the hedonistic, intangible thing called 'respect of our peers'.

'_You sound like Fire Lord Ozai_.' I might go as far as say that she is quoting him.

'_Father is usually a great judge of people's desires,_' Azula responds noncommittally.

'_There has to be something more,_' I say. '_Else he would not welcome us so openly._'

Once again reminding me of how young and inexperienced she actually is, Azula asks mentally, _'Can't he be overjoyed in welcoming the Fire Princess and his daughter's future patron?_'

I don't get a chance to retort further, because at that moment, we arrive at the opened second gate. At the top of those eight steps is a stern, well-groomed man in humble, red robes. His hair is graying slightly at either side, and his face is lined with decades of sighs, smiles, and frowns. This is Mai's father, and he walks brazenly up to me without observance of proper courtesy.

My girls stand at least two paces behind me like proper guards in an administrator's home, though Lin is just a pace to my right, like a proper secretary. They twitch at Kang Cao's motion, despite having just been run through days of continuous, bog-like paperwork.

"Princess Azula!" At one pace away, Mai's father bends his waist and even turns his eyes to the gray floor tiles just before my toes. Then he lurches up and grasps my shoulders, "How good it is to see you!"

"… and I you," Azula smiles acidly. She then makes a cute showing of looking around, "Where is Mai?"

"Mai is with her mother, shopping," He subtly steers us away from the gate to one of the side houses, which is probably a tea room or a lounge.

"I see. I will impose upon your hospitality then, Superintendent Kang," We allow a slight nod.

"You are friend of family! You do not impose at all, I insist. We shall have tea and snacks!" Then Mai's father claps twice and only then do I notice that we have drifted from the courtyard and into a lounge. Several servants stream in, dressed as simply as Mai's father. Lin stands behind me as my aide, but everyone else is ushered out by other servants.

Azula makes a hand signal that everything is fine discretely. We allow them to seat us, but we stay otherwise silent as Mai's father watches us.

After a sip, he says in a way like he is discussing the weather, "So I heard you have taken an interest in Omashu, Princess."

"My, and where did you hear that?" Azula returns coyly. It is a little creepy that we can act so coy at ten years old.

He winks, "Word travels fast. The eyes of the nation are upon you, Princess."

Behind us, Lin takes out her handy-dandy notebook and begins to scribe down our conversation. She is discrete enough, having been told to be so many times, that we don't notice Mai's father's glance turn that way.

"Then you know why we are here?" I am honestly curious about that, and I hope it shows on our adorable, ten-year-old face.

"I am assuming this is related to the Omashu Province?" The administrator coughs into one fist as he sees our nod and then sweeps his robes straight in one fluid move familiar to all who aspire to rise to the royal court. "I pledge my support, Princess."

"Then tell me," Azula blurts without thinking, only feeling that she had a way to him. "How much of the Red Omashu Trading Company do you own?"

I stop myself from reaching up and slapping us in the back of the head. '_Why are you asking that?_'

'_Why not? His word is binding, and if he fails to comply, he doesn't have a future in the Fire Nation_,' Azula replies as if the answer is obvious.

It isn't. '_And what's to stop him from snuffing us out?_'

'_He wouldn't._' We blink, and look up at the tall, elder man. '_He wouldn't… that would be traitorous!_'

'_Cornered rats will claw and bite through your chest, if the other alternative is to be burned alive. I doubt Kang Cao is the sort of man to be alarmed by such a question, but it does make him suspicious,_' I find myself saying rapidly as Mai's father begins to reply.

"It is a venture founded by a comrade of mine back when I was just a footman. Sato was from the northern colonies, and it took him some time to fit in, but he's savvy and thrifty. I believe, after the last offering, I own something like twenty five percent?" He muses.

"Wonderful! Then perhaps we can impose upon the company to aide us in our operations in Omashu?" I ask quickly. That may be too quick, but I am panicking to erase every suspicion.

Superintendent Kang shakes his head. "I'm afraid I am but one of five board members of the trading company…"

Azula does not relent. She cuts him off viciously, "You know I have writ and authority to take over operations completely, sir. I don't because I want to foster cooperation and growth."

"This isn't how to do either, Princess." Mai's father's eyebrows furrow together into a frown. He is beginning to become upset. "In fact, such a thing might anger many of the other board members of the company."

"Oh?" When did he move so close? "Perhaps you are right. It is a publicly traded company. But you know, we need to ensure success, and sometimes that requires sacrifice."

"I will help all I can, Princess Azula, but you cannot ask the company to devote its resources. That would demolish our nation's interests in the region," He protests, with a slight hitch in his tone, but he is otherwise calm enough despite being louder.

Yet I can see that he is letting up. It is easy to see he did not expect us to push towards this respect; we are but a child. Corruption is not uncommon in this country; as long as you are competent and you complete your goals, pocketing a little extra is often something that is overlooked.

Azula doesn't know what corruption can do to us, what it can lead to. Or perhaps she does, but it is a fact of life for her. It is one for me too… I am from China, after all. But I hate it.

I despise it.

And more importantly, for someone as powerful as Mai's father to be upset, there must be someone else behind him. It can't be Sato, the public face of things, and it can't be the man before me. They will gain, but someone else is pushing this all. There is something else going on here, all for the conquest of Omashu.

"Who is _really_ in charge?"

Kang Cao's hand rests upon the shoulder of my seat. It does not touch us, thus it is appropriate enough, but it lands there without a sound. I am reminded of how skilled Mai is with sharp things. "You can anger many powerful people looking into such things, my Princess. Such things could be deadly… for your new organization and those involved."


	9. Dinner at Mai's

9.

"… Dad, what are you doing?" A girl asks as she slinks out into the tea room with the laze of a feline. This girl is in fact a head taller than us, despite being our age. A spark of familiarity shines in her golden eyes, but it fades quickly as her eyes dart to her father. Then she slaps her forehead. "Dad… you're an embarrassment."

And just like that, all the tension leaves the room. Mai's father tugs on his collar and backs away. "Now, now, Mai, my daughter, where is your mother?"

Mai rolls her eyes like an expert teenager. With that same nonchalance, she replies, "Mom is picking out a dress for Azula. You don't mind, do you?"

"No," we say and sit back to watch the fireworks.

Mai immediately rounds on her father again, "Mom's really mad you didn't tell her Azula's coming, Dad. She wants to talk. In your room, and take all your lackeys too."

While we love to see Kang Cao squirm, he squeezes out a final, "We can resume our talk at dinner, Princess Azula." Then he bolts.

Well, no, he doesn't break into a sprint, but it is about as close as to a run without actually being one.

"What is that all about?" We ask as Mai takes her father's seat.

She barely looks up, choosing to make her presence almost as unknown as possible, where as our presence makes the air heavier and choking. Then Mai glances down at her nails, as if she cannot maintain eye contact for long. "Dad's former commanding officer is General Mao."

'_Ah._' That says a lot, actually.

High General Mao is one of the generals who are overshadowed by General Iroh's grand strategies and offensives in the last decade (such as the famous Siege of Ba Sing Se). Rather than attacking the heartland of the Earthen Kingdoms, Mao is delegated to pacifying the northern colonies, a meager job for someone below his station. It brings no glory to have to break up fights, and the only reason he is given the job is because the territory is so vast and thus the manpower necessary is large enough that only a general can do it.

He has done well for himself though. In the reports on current affairs, we see him transferring from being just another High General to being the Governor-General of the region that is known as the Grand Fire Nation Resort or the Su Oku province if entrepreneurial citizens keep immigrating there.

It has made Governor-General Mao a very rich man, but with only less than 5,000 Fire Nation citizens in the whole area, it has not fallen under proper administration. Thus, the Governor-General is also a very powerful man, and we have no doubts he acts as if the region is his own fiefdom, as most people do with such power. With such amenities, no one will want to leave, unless to rule an even richer land, like Omashu, for example. To be honest, even his current title of 'Governor-General' might well be a misnomer, because of the extent of his power in the region might well crown himself a king of the river region…

But what this also says is if we pursue this line of thinking, then Kang Cao is but one of the many proxies that General Mao uses to keep control over the Red Omashu Trading Company. "Does he offer your family protection?"

"Yes," Mai does not elaborate further, but we understand.

'_So they cannot help us. The Governor-General's forces are watching them. Disgusting!_' Azula grumbles as the fires within her heart builds.

'_You don't approve?_' I ask softly.

'_Approve? It undermines the war effort! We may as well lose while we bicker with each other…_' She rants as our face twists into something unpleasant.

'… _You know, this is only possible because a general is allowed to hold a political position,_' I prod on.

Azula widens our eyes. '_Then we must separate the military from the lawmakers!_'

'_Are you sure?_' I ask. '_If they don't have military experience, then how do they know what laws to make for the war effort? And if the colonies do not have a titular leader, then how do they coordinate any efforts?_'

'_What are you mumbling about now?_' Azula grimaces. A jolt of irritation shoots through us, and her tone reflects this, '_We are the titular leader. Lawmakers can be bickering philosophers for all I care, but colonial governors need to have their powers limited._'

That actually doesn't solve—

"Azula, you're making a face," Mai interrupts our conversation.

"So I am. I just realized this might go deeper than I realized… and it might be larger than we set out to tackle," We admit.

Mai rolls her eyes again. "Tell me about it."

"Is this what it's like, everyday?" I ask. I don't like having to crane my neck upwards to keep eye contact. So instead, I stand up and glide towards our friend. And since we're such good friends, it's entirely appropriate to rest my hand on her shoulder opposite mine, obviously.

"Yeah," she sighs.

"Want to get away from it all?" Azula offers a hand, figuratively and literally. Our palm opens inches away from Mai's face as we sit on the armrest of her seat. "Take my hand, Mai."

She doesn't. "You have a whole company. It's everything girls gossip about these days."

"Oh?" We raise a brow at that. "And what do girls say?"

"The usual," Mai replies. Her shoulder feels so tense and her back so rigid. Is she afraid? What does she have to fear of us, if she is so compliant to our will?

I urge Azula forward into unknown territory, and we find ourselves rubbing Mai's back in soothing circles. It is making Azula shiver in a sort of uncomfortable delight. To have Mai literally in the palm of our hands, Azula resists the urge to smile.

Mai shivers too.

What is it with this society and depriving daughters of physical contact? It is so… easy to exploit. Killing emotion and demanding absolute obedience often opens so many doors… I move our waist again and lean against Mai, resting my head against hers.

It is a gesture of trust, though Azula doesn't understand that.

She is only beginning to realize how powerful body language is, but she is already learning. We can see the effect we have on our friend. Watching closely at every subtle twitch and every breath, we get a strange, tender feeling in our chest. It's so weird, but not entirely unwelcomed. So we prod again, whispering, "And what is the usual?"

"T-The popular girls want to join, the d-dumb ones don't care, and everyone else says it's just another crazy royal thing," Mai croaks out. It's all too amusing to hear the hitch in her breath and the squeak of her voice before she clears her throat to say the rest of her sentence.

Amusing, but we ought to not play with our friend for too long. '_Mai can be a fun companion to have._'

'… _I will admit that she is better at sneaking around than me. Night fighting, as they call it,_' Azula relents.

'_This is the first time you've admitted that,_' I chortle silently.

'_It's entirely pointless to be sneaky if I can firebend._' Azula retorts immediately. But sometime along the way, my subtle pushes and influences have opened her up to adding, '_But for our organization, it's imperative to have this skill. Do I need to learn it?_'

While it is nice to see her developing and learning so quickly, it is also important to nip this at the bud. '_Not if you can delegate this to others… though some parts of the whole might be necessary for survival. After this, our share of night fighting might grow to more than we want._'

Then Mai takes our hand, snapping us out of our reverie. "When do we leave?"

"After dinner," we nod at Lin.

Our assistant nods and leaves for the other girls, smart enough to have long since put away her notes. She understands our instructions: make sure the girls are armed and ready, but they don't need to standby. We can't force their hand; we don't need to worry of immediate death and this means they can step down into a guard-like role.

Maybe I am a little paranoid, but preparing for any likelihood of betrayal is prudent, isn't it?

Dinner turns out to be a small affair. Mai's mother laments not for the first time that Mai's father did not tell her ahead of time. Mai whispers that her mother would have thrown a ball party for us. Mai's father is a lot more subdued… evidence that his standing in his home is actually lower than expected.

Well, he is outnumbered.

"—and one of the generals, your uncle, I believe, can make his tea warm, just by looking at it," Mai's father says, trying once again to steer the conversation on the table towards any direction but our campaign.

It is interesting though, so I borrow a hand and try to heat up our disgustingly cold tea. Ugh, who drinks _cold_ tea? That's just nasty!

Azula, however, has little need for restraint. "Mai's joining me in our Omashu project."

The entire dinner table stops. Even the servants stop moving.

We can hear the china spoons falling into their bowls with a _clink_, and even Mai's mother pausing in her incessant complaining. Mai's father pales and yelps immediately like a wounded dog, "That is… Mai, as your father, I cannot allow you into a warzone! You are too young!"

"I already agreed," Mai replies evenly.

Seeing that, Kang Cao slumps in his chair, stares into his soup, and starts muttering this or that. The conversation gets heated again, as Mai's mother finds her wits and they begin bickering like an old couple.

On the other hand, I focus on my tea cup. I can kind of see a bubble or two, or maybe steam. Maybe I'm just imagining things, but Iroh's tea heating does give me an idea. '_Instead of throwing tiny sparks of fires up from my hands, how about forcing the heat into the air to be compressed into the liquid…?_'

"Please, Princess," Mai's father pleads. "Please consider a different expedition for your first time? Omashu is too dangerous, and King Bumi is able to crush entire armies on his own! Why not something safer, like crushing pirates?"

"Actually, compared to what we have planned, pirates might be more dangerous," Azula notes.

Kang Cao frowns. "How… so?"

We smile—me because I can see that I'm forcing the littlest bubbles from popping from the corner of my eyes, using a yoga breathing exercise and batting my eyelashes of all things, and Azula because she has Mai's father's complete attention—and we say, "We aren't actually investigating any Fire Nation companies with royal approval. We're looking into… exploiting Omashu's resources. I believe iron is just a minor product compared to the other ores in the region?"

"That is true," Kang Cao nods. "But other industries are not developed. We'd need to bring in new personnel, new equipment… all of which is enough to be considered a national project, and that isn't including the trouble General Fong gives our shipping in the south, and, of course, King Bumi."

"I have a plan for that too, and it's—" Azula begins to say.

'_Uh oh, I think we can't really do this except in short bursts._' I interrupt at the speed of thought.

'_What?'_ Azula shoots back with a tone of surprise.

'_You feel it too? We've been bending the heat in the water for the last thirty minutes. I don't think I'm supposed to compress it for that long—_' I am cut off by the cup exploding into a hundred shards of ceramic, and the scalding tea shooting outwards in a spherical explosion while evaporating at the same time due to the heat not escaping quickly enough.

Azula slaps our other hand from one side to the other, and all the droplets of tea and tea leaves sprinkle safely onto the floor in one puddle. Then she very nearly snorts out a laugh, which she covers expertly by placing a hand over our lips and by giggling like an innocent girl that we definitely aren't.

'_Wait, I've been trying to do that all week, how did you do that in an instant?_'I blink, shocked and a little disappointed. Oh, no, wait, I bet she learns it all while I'm experimenting...

'_It's obvious. Do I have to say it? I'm the superior, once-in-a-thousand-years genius part of us,_' Azula gloats.

Once more, all action and sound in the dining room comes to a grinding halt.

For what seems like hours, no one speaks or makes a sound. Some (Mai's mother and servants) stare in abject shock and others (Mai) watch on with barely a hint of interest. Then Mai speaks in her utterly dull tone that said everything in life was boring.

"Azula, did you just _waterbend_?"


	10. A Star on the Rise

10.

"… No?" We backpedal with our eyes darting back and forth from Mai's family to the puddle around the shattered china tea cup.

Rather than make a scene of it like her parents are doing, Mai just rolls her eyes. "You're not being very convincing, Azula."

"And you've changed a lot too," Azula grouses before turning back to the puddle.

'_How did I do that?_' She asks.

'… _What do you mean?_' Dawning dread fills me. She doesn't know how to do that, does she?

'_What do you mean 'what do you mean'? I… I couldn't… I just went through the motions, acted instinctively, and copied what you did. What did we do?_' She begins to panic, as little good as it might do us, the expression can help.

'_Calm down._' I try to soothe her, even though I'm probably panicking twice as much as she is. I'm just bad at showing how distraught I am. I'm told by my family that I'm dimwitted that way that I don't understand emotions fast enough to react like normal people. '_We have to convince them that we did not waterbend first._'

'_Right,_' Azula's iron grasp over her emotions clamps down, and like napalm washing over an unsuspecting South Asian jungle, our mind becomes singularly filled with only one thing. Then Azula recomposes us and speaks, "What are you talking about anyway, Mai? I was just reminiscing on your father's tale of Uncle Iroh and I thought to try his trick too. That I can bend water through moving the fire within is just the obvious next step."

"Right," Mai nods as if that explains everything.

Neither of Mai's father nor her mother look convinced, but they will not say anything else in front of us. It is obvious this is going to leak out somehow, in some manner, since there are three servants in this room, and Lin is sitting beside us too. But to be honest, neither Azula nor I care enough about silly, insubstantial rumors to push the matter.

They will nod and agree with whatever we say. That is good enough for Azula and will be good enough for me for now.

'_The fire in the water?_' I ask with trepidation.

'_Isn't that what we did?_' The dread that I feel for Azula's sore lack of education is beginning to reflect. She is feeling something similar, and it hurts to have such emotions rebound on me. '_Isn't 'heat' just the fire in all things?_'

'_Try it again then,_' I motion towards the shattered shards of ceramic.

Azula nods and waves an open palm downwards. Nothing happens. '_This isn't right,_' she thinks with a frown.

Then again, and again, and again—until we are no longer just waving casually, but throwing our physical strength behind each thrust of our fist. Still nothing happens. Not a single shard moves and the puddle sits still, cooling.

'_Heat isn't just fire, but it is in all things,_' I whisper to her in hopes of helping.

This does less good than expected, because she rounds upon me, '_Then how did we move it? We can't be… we are a firebender! That is… that is… that is all we have… that is all that pleases Father, all that we have to show Grandfather, all that we are ever genius of! What good are we if we are not a firebender?_'

Our shoulders slump and we fall into our seat. At moments like these, I hate how closely resembling Chinese culture and styles that the Fire Nation is; chairs are made entirely of hard wood, straight and rigid. This leaves no room for slacking, thus it hurts to sit upon unless you keep perfectly upright posture.

It is then that I realize that I need more than just words to teach her what _my_ concept of heat is. I need images and I need her to experience it… like Toph experiences vibrations. I need her to _see_ heat like animals do, in thermals and in all the colors of the rainbow given shape, so that she can catch up to my understanding.

Only then can we surpass it. After all, even a modern rendition is only that; it is not truly seeing and feeling the heat, is it? It is simply bringing other spectrums to be visible to humans… it isn't developing an entirely new sense, like Toph will do, is it?

… Shit, humans in this world aren't even really human like me, are they?

Then again, I feel stupid at how I didn't see this earlier. I can endure fires hot enough to melt gold like they are punches, and I don't think I'm superhuman? But where does the line blur between Azula and me?

'_Close your eyes,_' I murmur at last, after what seems like hours but is probably moments of paradigm shattering epiphanies.

Azula complies without question. She is a good girl like that.

'_Don't look for colors. Don't look for light. Heat is in everything. It is the warmth of the teacup, yes, but it is also in water. And cold water is just hot water with less heat, just like it is freezing water with more heat. Everything has it, and they come in different colors of hot and cold, all just shades of heat._' We don't understand. We can't; even Toph has a teacher to show her. We are doing the most stupid thing: we are experimenting on ourselves, in a field unexplored. We are not seeing it, but what insights can I bring Azula? Many engineering and chemical concepts are already being covered in Fire Nation schools, aren't they? '_If there is no heat, create it. Make it swirl, until it is compressed. Shred and break them down, so that each force that resists is met with another. Smash them together and make them collide! Feel and see it everywhere, move it!_'

Azula does something indescribable with our hands, outside of my control. Like a master pianist or an expert typist, our fingers blur, each a jab, a swirl, and a form onto itself. '_I… I don't know… if…_'

If there is one thing Azula excels at, and one thing that no one else seems to have, is her absolute control of her inner self. We clamp down on emotions easily because they are nothing but a tool, but we still allow room to wiggle, if nothing but to not kill our instinctive reactions entirely. But in this case, we cannot allow any fluctuations. _I_ cannot let us fail. '_Perfect internal control is what we have. We must use our emotion, but we cannot let us feel anything but what we want to feel, exactly when we feel it and how._'

'… _Like the theories of bending Cold Fire, but rather than feeling nothing…_' Azula opens our eyes in surprise, but she understands enough now, without going the extra step of knowing heat like I do. Yes, internal control is well within the realm of her understanding and well outside of mine. '_I will control, you will guide._'

'_Then together…_' Our hands blur into motion.

'_We master heat!_' We thrust our hands out again, but it is an unnecessary gesture. Rather than bending with motions to aide our channeling of _Qi_, we control our emotions and thus the flow of _Qi_ within and without.

Heat is everywhere, so to bend by martial arts is not enough. In fact, it is impossible to bend pure heat, create it from nothing, using only what is firebending.

But to use our tumultuous, human emotions to guide our _Qi_ in every direction, we no longer have only one point of expression, or even the fourteen points of _Chakras_, because the _Qi_ flows from every part of our being. That is what heat is, isn't it? It is everywhere, so we must bend from our _everywhere_.

The pool of tea at our feet shakes as if the earth is shaking and the shards of china clink and clatter as they gather together.

For a brief moment, it is as if we are finally, truly making each drop, shard and speck move in a spiral of our will. But then, as with all things so compressed with the totality of our power, gathered in such a way, they explode.

Well…

I understate and misrepresent what happened and what will happen if I just say that the shattered cup and spilled tea 'exploded'. The tea evaporates until it is vapors and the ceramic shatters until it is dust, but that is not the end of it. They are still hot, and so very visible to our sense of heat. They shine in the room as brightly as Mai, who sits beside us, watching on with cool nonchalance, despite neither Mai nor the objects of our attention are _actually _shining.

'_We can't let it explode this time,_' Azula says first. '_This has much more energy in it than the last time we tried it._'

'_Then compress it more, burn it, melt it, until there is _nothing_ left. Isn't that the only way?_' I ask.

'_So be it_,' Azula concludes.

The ball of what used to be dust and vapors gathers into the air, a compressed force that is becoming smaller with each moment. And with each second, it grows hotter and brighter, first from a black thing with a slight glow of red, to something entirely orange, and now it is something bright yellow like molten gold and barely larger than a marble.

Its radiance showers the room with light brighter than any fire, though its heat does not even brush against any skin. Nothing reaches us from the bright star in the center of the room. After all, its heat is in absolute control and we let not a single iota break from the whole.

Our outstretched hand clenches into a fist and the light becomes blinding like a fire beyond fire. Blinding, but limited, it shrinks to into nothingness in less than a second. There is a hiss of _something_, but otherwise, nothing is left.

Looking at the expressions of Mai's family and servants, I take a guess, '_We just dug ourselves deeper, didn't we?_'


	11. Inward Imperfection

11.

"What was that?" Mai asks critically. She isn't even looking at us while she says this, taking to sipping on her tea instead.

"Just the bending of the fire within everything," Azula replies with equal calmness. Our eyes are not on Mai, however. It is her parents that we much look out for; their words have weight. "I wasn't waterbending at all. It's like the story of my grandfather bending the molten earth."

"… Which he did to fight the Avatar Roku," Mai notes.

"Yes," we nod and look down at our food. The soup is cold. How terrible! We bring the bowl to our lips and it starts to steam again. Warm soup is much better, though we need better control; it feels a bit scalding. Nevertheless, it is a taste that reminds of home, '_Mm, elephant koi fin soup._'

'… _This tastes like a chicken soup base,_' I note, though I have never tasted elephant koi.

'_No way, that's so… base. There's no way this can be chicken soup. That's a _peasant's_ dish,_' Azula shoots back venomously. '_Mai's parents wouldn't dare serve me chicken soup!_'

I chuckle and roll my eyes mentally. '_All I'm saying is it tastes like chicken soup._'

'_Hmph,_' Azula acts like she is ignoring my commentary, but we don't drink another sip.

"So," Kang Cao says slowly, mimicking Mai's calmness to a degree, but sweat gathers on his brow and he looks awfully pale. He strokes his short beard absentmindedly and tries to steer the table's conversation towards another direction, "What is your plan for Bumi and General Fong?"

We look to his eyes, and he turns away. Is he unnerved? We read body language well enough and we can see the way his facial features change as our undivided attention falls onto him. It is lucky that so few people are consummate actors in this age, and even less people bother studying body language formally. It is a sort of thing that comes with the spread of information, but for people of this era, there is only the lessons learned from their parents and experiences.

So from the ten or more different tells—from the way the area around his eyes move, the way his eyes dart, the twitch in his pinkie, the way he picks at one hand every so often, the six times she craned his neck, the twitch of the corners of his lips, the movement of his nostrils, the pace and depths of his breathing, and so on and so on—we can tell that we make Kang Cao afraid. As for us, we have yet to find out if that is a good thing. Azula might think so, but is it really?

But he is the father of our friend, and he has ambitions. He knows that we know that no one else has heard of such a way of firebending; therefore, we have only shown him. I have no doubts that Lin showed signs of surprise from my side too. We will have to educate her on such things in the future if we want to have a long term, trustworthy assistant. That will come, but this is now.

We decide to be truthful, "General Fong is not necessarily a problem should he leave his fortress. It is well defended, and possibly almost as tough a siege as Ba Sing Se, but his forces are limited, and all it takes to defeat him is to lure him out. We will do so by subverting Bumi."

Kang Cao frowns and speaks with the power and authority of a personage of his position for the first time since the start of this dinner, "Princess Azula, don't you think that our nation has tried that route? Bumi does not budge, and his senility makes any conversation impossible. Just ask your uncle; he has passed through the region too, I believe."

"General Iroh knowing King Bumi is not unexpected, but since you have confirmed it, I will talk to my uncle about his experiences," we allow with a shallow tilt of our head. Nothing he has said surprises us. "Nonetheless, King Bumi isn't as large a problem for us."

"How…?" Kang Cao chokes off before wincing as if someone is pinching him really hard on the leg.

"Now dear, I think we can let the girls figure it out. They are young and they can figure things out for themselves. It can be very educational," Mai's mother says with a serene smile. I don't trust it for a second.

It reminds me of when my mom smiles and answers the phone all cutely just after scolding me for the good part of an hour.

"Dear wife, I only, only…" His face scrunches up like a man who's just found out his beloved daughter is dating a boy before graduating high school or something.

"Remember how we met? It could be like that," Mai's mother cuts him off again. She is stroking his cheek. Why is she stroking his cheek? Why?

Mai, make her stop.

But we find Mai burying her face in her arms and growling, "Oh, kill me already."

Despite Mai's parents' weak protests, we leave that night. We are sure they did not want us there anyway, but courtesy requires them to beg us to stay the night and enjoy their hospitality.

Funnily enough, Kang Cao still does not trust us on our endeavor. First, he tries to offer us an accompaniment of firebending guards. We are not stupid; we shot it down immediately. Then he offers us a ship, to which we refuse again. Finally giving up, Kang Cao offers us a chest of silver worth a good trade junk.

And so, it is with a (small) chest filled with silver that we climb onto yet another rented merchant vessel to an outer colony.

Mai walks in within the first ten minutes after the girls settled in, to see them all at their cots converting copies of accounting books to our improved accounts, and shakes her head, "This is not what you're going to make me do for the next week and a half."

We nod, "You are right, of course. You already are versed in numbers. No, you get this."

Mai stares at the heavy tome we dropped onto her lap. It is thicker than our torso and as heavy as a fax machine. "What… is this?"

"Fire Nation Law, with Fire Nation Business Law," we reply with a smirk. "It's the codified version that Fire Lord Azulon had the Finance Ministry make around twenty years ago… which is apparently the most up to date."

Mai blinks down at the book.

Then she stares up at us with a haunted look.

Her expression is still blank, but there is a small twitch. Her eyes dart back and forth one more time, before she sighs, "Sometimes, I wish you would just tease me about having a crush on Zuko instead. Fine..."

"Good! Don't worry, I'll be skimming it too," We add while gripping our friend and roping her into a one-armed hug.

"Oh. Yay. Wonderful." She doesn't sound too happy, but we can't really see because she's turning away from us for some reason.

'_Oh well_,' we shrug. There are more important things to worry about. '_We need to figure out how to…_'

'_See heat? Must we? I fail to see why that is all so necessary._' Azula scoffs. '_We have more important matters at hand. We have yet to master the art… the art of _Starbending_. It grates upon my patience that we have a skill not understood._'

'_It's not 'starbending', that's just silly. That isn't even a star,_' I realize that she's derailing the conversation on purpose, but I can't just let that comment go.

'… _It looks like one,_' Azula scowls.

'_Let's… just leave that for later,_' I suggest, before turning to the matter at hand. It must be weird for everyone else in the cabin, to watch us just sit on the floor, as if we are actually meditating or something. _'What if we get blinded? If someone throws sand in our eyes? It's a legitimate concern; there's sandbenders in the desert, after all._'

'_That's... oh, fine. Being able to sense heat does make bending it easier, and I can see why._' Azula finally relents and our body relaxes. '_Control is easier this way, and to bend without bending requires… all of this._'

I shrug our shoulders in exasperation. At last she gets it. '_Of course, how else do you expect to have absolute control, if you cannot perceive it absolutely?_'

'_The… the breathing exercise, the _Qi_, this is all very… different. It is a good sort of different, which allows us to feel and control all the heat that we perceive._' Saying this and actually feeling it are two entirely different things. What will you do if you can actually feel the ship you are on, as if it is a part of you? This is uniquely different situation that I have never, ever experienced. And it is one that I can't even begin to imagine! _'But that… prompts me to wonder… How is it that you know of such things, when you are me?_'


	12. Outward Expression

12.

'_Yes,_' I reply. '_Who am I indeed?_'

My heart is stricken, and I nearly cause us to break out of our trance. In that fraction of a second, I nearly stop our breathing to panic. But what good is panic when it does us no good? What good is fear if she can feel it?

… But is it my fear or hers? Our emotions have mixed and matched for so many weeks that I can barely tell. Who am I? Who is Azula? Are we really different entities?

The uncertainty settles over the fear that washed away the panic. Anxiety returns like an aftershock; our head is dizzy with a fever as thoughts race through us. There is no way of telling if we are actually keeping our thoughts from each other, but we both know that we have moments where we cannot hear the other.

'_Don't you know?_' Our brow furrows as Azula asks the most piercing question.

'_Of course! I know who… I… am…_' I trail off. Who am I? What is my name?

The life that I had lived rises hazily into my memories, but I cannot remember the exact features of my face. Why does that face look so much like Azula's? No, I am… I look… I… Like a looking glass shattering and falling piece by piece, the memories of my very being disappears before my mind's eye.

'_This is troubling,_' Azula shudders. '_But… I know you have never lied to me. Like the curiosity that killed the phoenix who flew too high, should I worry when I ask your origins, my dummy side that knows things which we should not know?_'

I reply immediately at this. Even if there are so many things I do not know, there is one thing of which I am certain. '_I have never lied to you._'

'_I see you didn't answer me on the other question,_' Azula drawls.

'… _There's a lot of things I don't know. But you're right in that I have been keeping a secret,_' I sigh. There is no point in keeping secrets. We trust each other; sharing a body, sharing a mind, _sharing emotions_, and sharing our everything, how can we not?

Yet the thought that has never popped up until now lingers at the forefront of my mind: this cannot possibly be a dream. And that is why I panic.

If this isn't a dream, then what is it? Is it possession of a spirit into a body? Is it partial reincarnation? If it is a dream, then with its length being so long, am I in a coma? If this isn't the result of a coma… then _how come I don't remember dying?_

'_Oh-ho? This I have to hear,_' Azula smirks. But this smirk is just a reaction she was trained into doing by her father; it is not a curious or a happy gesture. I can feel our heartstrings being plucked like our nerves are strings on a harp. Every word belies unwanted fear. '_Do go on._'

'_Do you believe in destiny, my other side? Because I have seen our future,_' I decide to share everything that I have. Experiences of another life be damned, this is more relevant, isn't it?

'… _What?_' Of all the answers, this is not one that Azula expected to hear.

'_The Avatar will return in… four years, and provoked by Zuko and urged on by a water tribe witch, he will set off to end the war on his terms. We will lose, as a nation. But as Azula, we lose everything. We lose our friends, we lose our family, and we lose everything that defines us_.' Images of the crazed Azula flash before our eyes. Those pictures are a crude caricature of who we really are, like a parody of reality.

It makes us reel to have those memories brought to light, because that Azula is so hideous and different than what we are. Her hair is unevenly cut, in her eyes dance the fires of insanity, and her body is rigid with every emotion on her sleeves. There is no control in this Azula, only surrender.

'… _no._' Her voice is small, even in our mind.

'_That is what we would have become_,' I tell her and she knows I do not lie. I banish the vivid, horrid memories away from our mind. Even so, it lingers, and we are reminded of our dirty reflection; like the Joker to the Batman. '_If we stayed in the Capital until Zuko is banished for doing everything against the Fire Lord Ozai's teachings._'

'_Zuzu causes it?_' Our eyes blink open. Surprise shoots through us, and then it is quickly replaced by black rage.

'_No. Not directly. But it's different now, now that we're doing something so early,_' I interject.

'_But that doesn't explain our knowledge,_' Azula points out.

'_It does not. Look inside us. I don't know how to explain why I have the memories of a past life,_' another shudder passes through us.

For even royalty, spirits, reincarnation, and stories of myth and legend are what happen to other people. They don't happen to us; they happen to people a hundred years ago, hidden in the mists of time and lore.

Azula rallies quicker than me; I am still stuck on my own fate. If this is truly reality and I am truly here, then what happened to me is… hugely important to me.

She nods, as if everything is understood and that we need not dig deeper. '_Then you are still me, despite all things. We will keep no secrets from each other, we will not hinder each other, and we are still one and the same, despite our differences. Come, my other side, let's work on… what was it you called it? Thermal Vision?_'

I wish I could have gaped aghast at how nonchalant she sounded, but then as we share a body and she has utter control over our feelings, I cannot do as I wish. More than that, the sheer personality and personal _power_ that she exudes into our mind is overwhelming. The after affects of her charisma sends me a thousand stars that dance in my vision, and I am left with no other options but to stay calm even though I should be out of breath. I reply with an awkward tease, '_I thought you didn't want to keep working on it?_'

'_You aren't really using our head very well, are you? Did you think you're the only one with the smarts?_' Azula giggles within us and our body shakes with laughter. '_There are so many other uses for this step above just sensing heat. So many people underestimate firebenders for being bright and flashy and think we are unable to fight in the dark._'

Ah, I understand. And while it's nice to feel that we are one again, the memory that I did not tell her this earlier lingers. However, we are never one to let past records to damage relationships. I retort, '_And how do you expect to be able to fight in darkness without firebending?_'

'_We've got heat, don't we? If there is heat in all things, then there must be heat within darkness too._' And then, we snap our head up as Azula comes to terms with what heat may be. '_Then… then… _heat_ is not _exactly_ fire, is it? It does not make light._'

'_Um… that may be so, but how do you expect to see without our eyes? It is light that we see, not…_' I trail off, realization hitting me as well.

You might say that Toph has great hearing because she is blind, but she doesn't really hear the tremors in the ground, does she? She feels it with her feet, _which she uses to bend earth_.

'_Oh. Oh…_' We can't just make our physical body into something it is not. We can't make our senses perceive a sense that they have no capability to do so.

'… _I don't get it_,' Azula pouts cutely.

'_It was never about seeing heat with _just_ our eyes. We're a step in that direction, firebending with our eyelashes. But how do we bend with our eyes, unless…_' I trail off again, but this time, Azula knows what I am thinking. She finishes the sentence for me, and for a moment, we forget that we had any problems of trust at all.

'… _We apply our _Qi_ into our eyes. That is how we feel heat, isn't it? I didn't get it until now; it's because we make our _Qi_ flow different from how the firebending masters and legends and scrolls all say._' Azula opens our eyes and we stand, slightly dazed by having sat for so long. As understanding comes to us, so does exhaustion. How long have we been sitting there? '_We don't need to _see_ heat. We can feel it with our skin._'

It is night already. There is a blanket on our shoulders, left there by one of the girls.

Everyone is asleep, except for Mai, who is still at her cot, reading the law book in her huddled, awkward form. She shivers slightly, and we feel a… something pass over us.

We dismiss the weird emotion, since it has no place here, and creep up beside our friend.

Then, as she leans too close, we reach up and brush away her hair, lest it be burnt by her candle light. "Hey, be careful there."

She looks up at us and nods appreciatively, though her face is still blank as always. We have learned to look beyond her expressions to read her, though we do not forget who it was that made her into this in the first place. "The candle's too small, but the boat doesn't have more. They say they're expensive."

Noticing her shiver, we taken the blanket of silk and wool from our shoulders and drape it over Mai. "Get some sleep."

"I can't. Can't you see how excited I am?" She asks in a tone that threatens to bore me to sleep.

"… Yes, I can see that," I reply for Azula, who is too busy rolling our eyes. "Anyway, proper sleep is important. After all, if you don't sleep well, you can't perform well. And I care about your health. Come on, snuff out that light and let's go to bed. There's no more excitement for us for this day, anyway." And we are dearly thankful that she doesn't even question what we just did for the last four or five hours meditating.

Just then, a gong goes off from the top deck, and the voice of the first mate filters through the rice-paper on our cabin door that is terribly in need of maintenance. "Pirates!"

This time, I roll our eyes and Azula grumbles, "Why do I even bother?"


	13. Bending a Nice Boat

13.

"Ladies, I dislike naval warfare.

Ladies, I hate naval warfare.

Ladies, I hate naval warfare!

I hate the way our feet sway and our knees nearly buckle as the waves crash against the side of our ship. I hate the way we can barely hear the captain's voice over the pitter-patter of the water splashing against the wooden deck. I hate the frantic, running sailors who are more prone to praying to some unknown sea spirit than to actually pass weapons onto the next man.

I hate the way the sailors ignore me, fearing some unknown doom on the horizon rather than I, who measure only up to their waist. I hate the way my girls are shivering and swaying to in a show of marine inexperience. I hate my own inexperience in marine combat as well.

But do you know what I hate most of all, in this damp, dark situation that we are in, ladies? It isn't the spray of water that hits my cheeks every few seconds because we are trying to go faster. It isn't that I might feel useless standing on a wooden ship, being chased by more wooden ships. It's not even these damnable, soggy slippers that the water has ruined.

No, what I hate most are the Agni-damned pirates who interrupt me just when I'm about to get some beauty sleep!" Yes, this is the first time we actually spoke at lengths with the girls outside of telling them what to do. I understand it's not the more rousing of speeches, but that isn't what we're going for. We simply want to express our irritation. We want the moment to be seared into their memories as to why it is never a good idea to fuck with Azula. "Now, I know you girls have prepared for combat, but you've never fought on a ship. That's fine. You earn no demerits from not following me into the den of battle, onto other ships."

We take a deep breath now and take a moment to look upon our girls. Lin and Mai have grim-set faces, signaling they will follow us no matter what we say or how afraid they are. Why?

Well, it doesn't matter.

"Just don't try to stop me. I'm going to talk to our honorable Captain Guai." We watch the dark waters through the curtains. It's hard to sense heat amidst waters so cold; we can barely see passed the water outlining our boat. Our voice drops to a hiss as we think of the comforts denied to us. "Then I'm going to enter some aggressive negotiations with some very rude people."

The junk is rocking back and forth as we climb from the deck to the upper part of the boat, where Captain Guai is steering and shouting out commands.

The night is dark and the oceans are calm enough, it seems, but not enough to keep everything still. Our vision swims briefly, and this effect never goes away as the whole world seems to be rocking at a sickening pace. Back and forth, back and forth, we nearly stumble again on the third step before we catch the wooden railings at our side.

The sailors are running about frantically, so filled with fear and so easily catching our attention. We do a quick count in our head. In addition to the captain, there are fourteen crew members on the deck; the cook and the cabin boy are below decks, as is another scholarly man who has robes with the mark of Fire Nation University and enough books in his hands to last us a month's worth of campfires. None of those below can help, and from the looks of the sleep deprived girls behind me, we don't think our girls should either. Cramming for long hours will make the girls underperform. They can get killed, or worse, damage the books.

Unlike in the modern world, books such as those law tomes are actually worth enough to buy a small house in the Capital.

Still, we have Lin and Mai beside us, and that is enough to allow our hackles to fall. We step onto the top deck, some distances away. "Hello, Captain," we say, as if discussing the weather.

He stares at us for a moment as if not really believing that we are there, before saying, "Milady, it's not safe up here. You would be best to stay below the deck."

"How many are following us?" We motion towards the scope that is strapped to his belt, completely ignoring the sense of urgency that is plainly displayed on his face and the rage boiling within us. This is all a play of power, a game Azula knows best. "It's rather dark."

"I… you…" He sounds as if he is about to choke, how adorable.

"Oh, and it's probably best you address me properly, Captain Guai. You never know when decorum is necessary," We add, as if we are saying just an unnecessary afterthought and not the threat that it completely sounds like it is.

"There are three ships," He says at last, after getting whatever it is that is bothering him out of his throat. Agitatedly, he grumbles, "Now, if you're satisfied, I'd like to get back to work and…"

"My princess," We whisper.

"What?"

"My princess," We say again, more firmly and loud enough for all above deck to hear. "You will address me properly, Captain, and I will witness your… Captaining. Do carry on, we wouldn't want to be caught by the pirates would we?"

It is all a power play in one form or another. The fine captain and his crew need to know that we are standing with them, and thus earning their respect. They need to see us watching unobstructingly, to know that we trust them.

Even if we are haughty, even if we are rude, it is expected. That is the way of Chinese culture, and it is no different in the Fire Nation.

Only the corruption that hinders is bad; all other forms are tolerable.

Far too many people do not understand this of our culture, but it is no matter. Here, the sailors expect the Princess to do as the Princess does. They do not expect the Princess to be meek or weak, like I am.

In doing so, am I becoming more like Azula? Or in seeking their respect, she is becoming more like me?

There isn't even a need to communicate between us, on either point.

We all know that we should only stick to our strengths.

"Captain, how is it that they are moving faster than we are?" We ask suddenly. The dark shapes of the pirate vessels are coming into view, and they loom in the darkness of the night. The one in the center is larger, sleeker, and metallic, but the two others look wooden.

There is no sail on the one in the middle, only black, choking smoke. There is smoke on the others, but…

"It's their firebenders… my Princess," Captain Guai grumbles gruffly. "They are using firebending to cut away currents and propel their ships."

We blink in surprise through our haze of hatred for a brief moment. "How are their boats able to withstand such heat?"

The Captain Guai shrugs. "It's something the pirates use to laminate their wood with. I hear it's some kind of seaweed that prevents their ships from burning. Now do you have any more questions, or can I try to save our lives?"

"By all means," We allow a shallow nod. "But it will do us little good considering close they are now."

Captain Guai spits out the side of the boat, "Damn it! If you hadn't been distracting me—"

"Princess. And it wouldn't have mattered much, considering how fast they are," We check our nails as we say this. "And that sounds very close to insubordination."

"Insubordination? I'm not your spirits damned navy!" He shouts.

"… And that sounds like treachery," We add with a smile. Ah, they are close enough to sense now.

We turn about, and see the two galleys less than fifty meters away and filled to the brim with all sorts of dirty riff-raft that we want to have nothing to do with. I should mention now that I hate the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' series. No, scratch that, I love it. I love how hot the characters are and I love the wacky action…

… but none of this is like that at all! This isn't fun! This is terrible! I'm wet, I'm cold, and I'm sleep deprived. _And I want to burn everything_.

The good captain and his crew are silent towards me; obviously I have overstepped my line. That is fine, because they are also concentrating on their work.

We ride the waves into an archipelago of rocks, too small for settlement and too large for navigation. A jolt of strange emotion runs through us, and we turn towards the Captain Guai, only to see a mad gleam of concentration in his eyes. He will not pay attention to anything but steering now, and I don't think we want to distract him.

We don't remember much of what happens next. We might have started puking in our mouths and the ship might have swung left and left worse than any rollercoaster. I always have and always will hate rollercoasters. But no, we do not remember, only that everything is a blur.

And then, suddenly, one of the galleys swings close and the two ships' sides clash.

'_I've had just about enough,_' Azula growls.

'_Urp,_' I agree readily.

Blue fire streams out of our hands and over the ship like a flamethrower at first. It does not reach enough and it does not burn nearly enough. Having had enough, we jump over the rails and start flinging and thrashing out in a way that will tire us quickly—but such is the way since firebending very rarely utilizes long-range-combat. Even when we are pioneering into strange arts, we still fall back on what we are used to most.

Raging balls of blue fire streak across the night sky, lighting up the dark waters and smashing against the galley. For a moment, the pirates are laughing at us. But soon, they laugh no longer, because our fire doesn't just burn.

It explodes. It smashes. It is force onto itself.

Chips of wood fly—is this what it feels like to have _superhuman _senses, where even time noticeably slows?—not as quickly as we wish. A few pieces fly close, and we reach for it. Sticky, dark… this is how these galleys sneak up on unsuspecting vessels, but the hot, sticky substance? It doesn't burn.

'_So it not only prevents fires, it also holds the galleys together?_' Azula turns our head and we see another galley fast approaching.

If our junk does not turn and disengage from this galley fast enough, the other galley will simply trap us in between the two ships. '_And we can't even push them away… the fires will damage our ship more than theirs._'

'_Heat doesn't just burn does it?_' Azula asks tartly, knowing my answer already.

The conclusion is a sound one: even if this seaweed tar is not flammable, it is susceptible to melting. After all, the pieces of wood we picked up are not just covered in this black, gooey stuff, but soaked in it as well. And even if it cannot burn with the blue fires… '_All things can burn._'

But that isn't the only reason we have come to this conclusion. With a sense for heat, we can feel what is hottest near us. While the seaweed tar cannot burn, it does retain heat. In fact, it's hotter than even the few pieces of wood we blew up and are now burning.

Wooden beams begin to creak with the galley. At first, it is soft, but it grows louder and louder, like a giant in dire pain.

These scoundrels of the sea begin to panic, some going as far as jumping into the water.

'_No. They attacked us. They are not allowed to escape._' The border of our vision is red with the rage finally unleashed. Our hands reach out and lift, and the pirates find themselves being thrown—by the blood within their body, by the bones that hold them together, and by their very flesh—back onto the deck of the galley that is twisting and warping in delightful agony as heat transfers and gathers and builds up within its body.

"Come then! Be swallowed by the hot waters! Boil until there is nothing left!" We cry shrilly in joy as the results of our long hours of experimentation finally bear their fruits. We stand at the edge of the boat, as the pirate galley warps into the twisted form that resembles more of a pretzel than ship, bubbling horrors of dark liquids, agonizing wails of wood, and the last throes of villains all mixed into one. "Don't bother praying to the ancient spirit you worship in your last moments, because she has no mercy for you!"

And, as if the world just loves to interrupt us in our victory and spoil any celebration we might have, a bolt of lightning cuts close against us. Oh, it is too close; it even knocks the headdress off of our head and spills our neatly tied hair.

The ironclad streams towards us rapidly as the second galley rams into our junk's side, making an audible crunch that causes all aboard to wince. At the bow of the ironclad warship, a single man in tarnished Fire Nation military armor stands, his form strange to Azula, but vaguely familiar to me.

His arms are wide and straight, spinning slowly in a spiral around him as if he is trying to draw the Taoist symbol in the air. But then hails us with all the charisma of Johnny Depp, just like in that film. There is a jolly cheer to his demeanor, but it is overshadowed by the electricity sparking in his hands—an attack much faster than we can manage with heat, and too far reaching to counter with fire—and the two dozen or more dirty scum behind him. "Ho there, merchant vessel! Surrender and prepare to be boarded by crew of Lightning Bolt Jolt!"


	14. The Thinnest Move

14.

I do not know where I heard this from, but humans are supposed to only be able to track eight different things with their sight at the same time. There are stories in fiction, where people can see out the back of their heads and track more things and see further. Those things are easy for comics and cartoons to depict; after all, even Toph's ability to 'see' is depicted by vibrations. Now take that up to eleven, multiply it by a sixth sense, and add the depths of information coming at us from every direction, and you will have just a glimpse of what we are doing.

We are watching the pirate Jolt with our eyes. Our sight takes in every twitch as Azula looks for weaknesses and I look for his next move. She studies his ghastly features—those hollow eyes, roguish goatee, red headband, and strange apparel—for where his psychological weaknesses might lie. I will not lie; I think she is doing this subconsciously, whereas I am actively trying to predict his next move.

Our eyes also watch the men behind him, who outnumber Captain Guai's crew slightly. Their first mistake is not pouring onto the deck immediately, choosing to creep and walk behind the lead pirate in an almost orderly fashion. It is almost like they are disciplined, but it is more likely that they have practiced this many times and carried it out even more.

At the same time, the other, smaller galley charges on, just twenty meters away and trying to knock our ship onto one of the nearby rocks. They are not going to try to take our ship, it seems. Eighteen of them are below decks rowing, with fifteen of them being chained to their seats. One man is standing at their front, his mouth wide, possibly yelling. We cannot detect sound or the vibrations in the air; we aren't that good. Eleven are above the deck. One of those men is steering, one is latched onto a sail, and the rest are on the edge with spear-like weapons drawn.

Our girls have their swords and not their shields. We are not prepared for an open confrontation; so they will have to go with a sword-and-dagger combination. I remember talking with them just once, about different tactics being used in different locations; pike walls are good for open fields, but they are terrible for sieges. I remember saying off-handedly that if we are caught fighting on the seas, we cannot rely on the spears and shields in our packs, because we simply will not have the room for such things. It is nice to see that the girls have been paying attention, yet they aren't listening to our instructions to stay low at all. They are all following Lin up and readying themselves on the right side of the ship for the galley's pirates to board.

The ironclad has more people. Some of them are small, probably children or women, I cannot tell. They stay lower, unlike the twenty-seven who are behind the scum named Jolt. There are three of these serving wenches and three other men below decks in a boiler room. This large vessel looks more and more like a repurposed Fire Nation destroyer with a shabbier, deceptive shell.

The crew behind me is scrabbling. Some are trying to get below to hide, some are shaking and inching towards the rails, and others are spitting in their hands. There are all sorts of sailors, but very few crews are so diverse. For a moment, we wonder if this crew is just one that has recently been put together.

All of these things are happening at the same time, within a fifty meter radius around us. We are seeing and feeling everything happen at the same time, and I find this hard to express in words. How do you describe a sixth sense? How do you tell a blind person of a newly discovered color? How do you write into words what it is to smell sound, taste color, or to see heat?

This is just a moment's contemplation.

It ends.

The cocky gait of the pirate captain is an irritation, a pimple on the world's ass. Each step makes an exaggerated clinking sound as hefty bags of coins jingle at his belt and in his pockets. He has this smirk on his face that _just makes me want to punch his face_. Dreadlocks flutter in the night wind as he displays his rotten, yellowing teeth for the whole world to see, and a draft of a foul, urine-like odor drifts towards us.

We wrinkle our nose. It's disgusting.

"Well, well, what have we here?" And as if his speech cannot begin in a more stereotypical way, Jolt sways from side to side as he speaks. Right at the heels of the urine, the heavy scent of alcohol wafts over and they mix into an unholy concoction. "You know, merchant ships heading over to the Earth Kingdom usually have the courtesy of stopping and paying toll. It leaves… what's the word?"

Neither Azula nor I want to banter. It's not just dumb, it's _silly_. I mean, I want to, if I don't have to stand the stinging sensation in our nose this whole time. But more importantly, bantering is something that is done between near-equals.

This idiot, who walks right into our range of fire, does not even come close to our intellect.

A roar deafens the seas as we flip and fall to a crouching horse stance, twin fists thrust outwards. We throw as much as we did into the first galley into this wild, raging inferno. It is conical from our lack of control, though it starts off as two overwhelmingly large balls of fire that merge into one even larger. The blue stream is the result, with hundreds of tiny embers spiraling and zigzagging around, orbiting the flame as if it were a sun.

There is a reason for this. I am panicking inside, because his lightning is almost instantaneous and lethal at a glancing blow. Azula knows what cold fire is, and this affront to her legacy _cannot stand_.

"Boys," Jolt lifts a bottle to his lips.

The four men directly behind him leap forward and fall into a stance higher than ours. They stand strangely, not in a straight line but in a diagonal one. Each has the heat of a firebender about to unleash their power upon the world.

The closest man approaches first, his arms flailing wildly. '_No, those are not the moves of a human shield…_' He does not block or deflect the fires with his own. Instead, he coerces them to his right and diverts them away from the wood.

The next man takes a step forward just as the previous man finishes flinging. He redirects the flow of our flames further.

And then the next and the next; they all do the same.

'_Why do I have a feeling that they aren't normal pirates?_' I feel our eyes grow wide. This is not a simple team of firebenders. They need to have perfect trust in the previous not to leave their companions to be swallowed in fire.

'_Because they aren't. That is not something that is taught even to normal soldiers._' Azula shifts our attention back to the swaying captain. '_Pay attention._'

That is not swaying! That's…

Another bolt of lightning flies above us, jabbing through the masts of the junk and Captain Guai's first mate. We are temporarily blinded by the light, but we sense the pirate captain's outstretched arm aiming where the lightning disappeared into the night.

He starts chortling, "And here we thought we had to fight a firebending master. It's just a kid!"

We duck down and behind the wooden cabin on the deck of the junk, just as the pirate's four men shoot streams of fire at us. They are individually even slightly below the Qiao sisters' ability in terms of power, but four at once? Our sails are burning. The wooden beams that make up the mast creak and groan above us, with a huge hole in its middle. Yes, that will fall soon.

"Come on out girlie. I won't hurt you," Jolt laughs again. "But you rascals… wait, Guai, is that you? Ha! Looks like you've come to the end of the line, eh?"

'_He isn't even treating us like we're a threat!_' Azula sounds angrier than she was before.

'_At least Captain Guai is a levelheaded man; he knows he can't give us up,_' I try to calm her.

'_No need for that. I'm going to melt these… these scum!_' Azula takes a half-step forward, only for me to hold her back.

'_Wait, we need a plan. Calm down!_' I urge again. We are only strong if we are working together; if we let it go, then we're probably going to burn out before the fighting's over. And that isn't all that hard, considering we're already feeling sluggish.

'_I am calm._' Suddenly, it feels like someone dumped a bucket of ice over our head, but suddenly, there is no more rage. I do not mention that she was raging though. There is no reason to be counterproductive.

'_Then you know how he sways? We can attack when he's down,_' I strategize.

'_No._'

'_What?_'

'_He's leaving himself open on purpose. Besides, that necessitates provoking him to attack. If you haven't noticed, the ship is about to collapse on itself._' Azula rolls our eyes.

Do I feel stupid for being told off by a ten-year-old? A little, but our enemy can hurl more lightning than Emperor Palpatine. This is no time to worry over something so minor!

'_Then we take care of the others first. Isolate and eliminate,_' I suggest next slowly. Do we go after the fire benders or the men behind him? They all look more armed than I want to deal with.

'_Right. Let's throw them overboard._' We turn towards our right side, where the pirates on the other galley are already throwing roped hooks at our merchant vessel.

Remember that all-direction heat sense? It works through all sorts of barriers, right?

We duck low and start pushing and pulling at the galley. The heat of the wood is barely there, and throwing any flames will give us away. But the heat is there, and even if we cannot even dream of pulling off the first move one more time, we can swing it upside down.

At the same time, the flaming sails above us fall, and we only notice at the last moment because the intense focus required for moving something so large.

Mai tackles us out of the way.

Lin is above her, shielding us from the flaming wreckage that falls as the masts fall into each other.

"Azula, stop spacing out," Mai growls.

We blink in surprise and maybe a little deliriously from exhaustion, "Mai, that's the most emotion you've shown all day!"

"Now's not the time for that, Princess!" Lin yelps, pushing away the burning sailings. Another lightning bolt flies over head, utterly severing the wood holding up the every function of the ship above us.

"Now's the perfect time to…" We shrug out of Mai's grasp and stomp forwards again, our eyes of the prize. "Push!"

The galley creaks much like the masts did. It takes a lot of effort to break a ship in two, especially one so carefully constructed. Even if we try to rip it into two, the effort needed is greater than we can muster as a whole. There are just too many different factors in play; it's almost as if the heat within each plank needs attention on its own. To compress it as a whole is equally hard, almost too difficult for us as we are. If we do it—and I know we can—we'll probably collapse on the deck right then and there.

So that only leaves us with this 'rock the boat' method. It's slow, but after ten or so swings of the pendulum, the galley is already swinging from side to side enough to throw most of the pirates above deck off.

There is a trick to this too; if we do it too hard, not only do we lose valuable energy, we also might have the galley's mass crash into our merchant vessel.

And really, throwing the pirates off should be enough.

But Azula pulls again.

'_Wait, that's going to crash into—_'

'_Push_,' Azula commands, and I follow suit instinctively. The galley flips over with the sickening sound of a hundred wooden planks doing a belly flop.

There are screams too.

I feel a little numb. Those were slaves below deck, weren't they?

Should… should I be upset?

Why don't I feel anything?

But then again, _I feel what Azula feels_.

A thin stream of fire hits our shoulder, dislocating our right arm and causing us to be flipped over in the air before we crash down on the deck of the junk on our side. Our vision goes dark, but we feel Mai running towards us, knives flashing.

Lin runs up to Mai and blocks the next three streams. She is singed all over, because she herself does not have the aptitude to block so many hits. I feel the heat on her stomach. That is going to take off her skin if she…

For a moment we black out.

It is just a moment.

Lin cannot block every flare, and we are feeling something hot tickling the side of our head. It is scalding, but it doesn't burn. '_Focus. I barely blocked that one, and it still hurt._'

'… _Sorry…_' We pick ourselves up and immediately wobble onto Mai's comfortable shoulder.

'_How are we so __**weak**__?_' Azula asks. I cannot tell if she is angry or curious. She can be feeling anything right now. I can be feeling anything right now. And I will never actually know what that feeling is, because we have been holding an absolute control over ourselves for this entire encounter.

'_I think we can't use the heat sense in such a prolonged way. We just discovered it._' I tell her my first assumption. It makes sense, considering how it even takes Toph many years.

Thinking about it, my using only one, single outlier as my only example is a rather bad idea.

'_Might be… but that's not what I'm talking about._' Azula nods towards the remaining pirates, who are now exchanging blows with Lin and the girls at a distance. As brave as our girls are, they are inexperienced, and outnumbered, and they are taking a lot of hits.

Instead of helping, Captain Guai set his sailors to doing something with the boat. I'm too tired to care… it's probably something to do with the fire.

'_We need something that can't be thrown away by those firebenders._' I sigh. '_I can't believe we're fighting firebenders._'

Azula grinds our teeth. '_We can figure it out afterwards. A whip is a possibility._'

'_And there's also the men behind them. Looks like they are securing their boat to ours. And there's also Jolt himself._' I point out.

'_Are you being deliberately obtuse?_'

'… _No._'

Azula shakes our head and we flip ourselves up and back into the cover of burning debris.

"Mai, how good are you with the knives?"

She deadpans, "Good enough."

"Good," We nod. "Here's what we do…"

We jump over Lin and throw our fire-whip. Only, this is not a whip in the traditional sense of the skill. Something so thick cannot cut, even if it is still attached and thus harder to bend away. So what can we do but make it thinner and smaller?

Ultimately, it comes down to our control of our _Qi _and our body for the fires, and the control of emotion for the extra component that holds this thin line of fire together. After all, no one can tell us we can't reinforce firebending with heatbending (I refuse to call it something as childish as starbending).

We swing it in from our left, where the last in the line of the four firebenders is. This is planned for two reasons. First, if he severs our connection to our fire, we are still connected to the remainder of the whip that hits the next three pirates. Secondly, though their diagonal formation is something interesting that I have not seen before in squad tactics against a single, powerful firebender, this is not anything new in the art of war.

The thread of fire sears through the first man's neck, the second man's torso, and the third man's forehead before the fourth realizes that his companions behind him aren't supporting as they should and jumps away into the icy waters.

We are about to bring the thread of cutting fire around for a second go at the mass of pirates now focusing on us, when Jolt walks up again, swaying.

Mai must have gotten a little trigger happy, because her knives are skewering through Jolt's hands and feet before he even starts sparking up. The pirate yelps, but he can't get away since he is pinned to the deck. A second wave of knives secures him until he can only move his head.

We make a lazy wave with our newly invented technique, but most of the pirates, seeing their leader and his elites fallen, decide on the better part of valor.

Annoyed at how anticlimactic the ending to our fight turns out to be, we turn to Mai. It is not completely one sided, sure, what with more than half of Captain Guai's crew lying dead, more than a few of our girls missing in the chaotic scuffle that we barely paid any attention to, and Lin lying to our side cooling a bit as if she might not wake up… but Mai. Damn it, Mai.

"What? It's not like I killed him."

"That's not the point!"

Our body chooses that moment for us to pass out again. And this time, it takes us a while to wake up, probably.


	15. The Princess

15

I want to black out. Our body wants to black out. There is nothing left. Our stamina has run out, our mind is barely able to bring a new thought out of the haze, and our sight has blurred to the point of dark splotches and bright fuzz balls are about all we can make out. We wobble in the wind like a tissue.

As we fall forward, Azula bring a foot forward and stomps down. The impact echoes into the night, resounding through the deck. The attention is on us now. This leg is numb from exertion, and as adrenaline fades, pain rears its ugly head.

Somehow, we take solace in that pain.

And Azula uses it to keep us awake.

Our voice is gravely and rough, "Mai. Get me some food and water."

She is at our side, holding us up. We will probably crumble into a heap, if she was not here, but for us to show an image of strength, we cannot have her holding us up.

After a moment's silence, we turn to her in askance. "Well?"

"Fine," Mai sighs. "Don't die while I'm gone."

We nod and look over at the dumbfounded sailors in their stupor. How droll that they are not doing their duty. Our arms cross as we lean on a broken ruin of a mast and scowl to hide our winces and drooping from pain and exhaustion. There is only eight of them left standing, including Captain Guai. "Well? Tend to the wounded, salvage what you can. Help my Lin, now."

Captain Guai must still be in his daze because he asks, "Your Lin?"

We nod to our First Private who is slumped at our feet. She is leaning forward, and her hair has been undone sometime in the fighting, hiding her face in shadow. She is clutching her stomach with one hand and her arm with the other. There is a smell of burnt flesh about her. "My Lin. You will see what you can do about the burns and make sure she lives." The 'or else' is left silent.

As the sailor get to work, shivering and shaking as they do so for some odd reason or another, we turn to our girls.

They too are staring at us, almost as if they have never seen us before. There might be a reason for this, but we are too lightheaded and too winded to bother thinking about it. All we do is bark, "Girls, mop up the rest of the scum within the area. Give them no reason to regroup and come again. If you have any medical training, help the wounded."

They get to work silently. There are only seven of our girls left from the original ten. Two are heavily wounded that they cannot even muster up a salute, and one is missing. I think one of the pirates dragged her down, but we do not remember where or when.

One of our girls has some salve; it is probably expected that treating burns is a thing for army girls. Good for her that she is sharing.

We stare down at Lin, whose torso looks an ugly red under the moon light.

If only we can heal… but Fire is for burning. It always has been this way. We have no knowledge or training in healing; what little I know of it is more related to microbiology, stem cells, and the sort that I had contact with in another lifetime. It is probably for the best we do not try. I do not think we can survive using a new technique in our state of emptiness.

Only the sound of the wreckages to our left and right make any sound in the waters. To our left, the sum of our skill, there is the first galley, which is now in tiny bits and pieces of wood and flesh. To our right, there is only the capsized and suffocated form of the second galley. A few pirate survivors cling on to the edge perhaps, but it is hard to see in the darkness, and they will not want to catch the attention of my girls. There are so many more sources of sound than drifting wood in the darkness.

But I do not hear the screams of scum.

Out of the corner of our eyes, we see Jolt pulling himself up. He seems to be very tolerant of pain, to pull the knives that stuck his hands to the deck out, and beginning to do the same with those that catch his feet. The rest only pin his gaudy clothes—those dark leathers of black, red and blue, and those dirty, white linens—along with his overabundant jewelry. At our attention, he stops moving and smirks up at us.

"I'll get to you in a moment," I tell him tiredly. I worry more for Lin than about him. If Mai can take him down so easily, then he is no problem. It is his charisma that makes him dangerous; a powerful team is more than a match for a single powerful bender.

"Oh, you think so? Well, I think… not," Jolt says after a pause. Then he shrugs the knives out of the back of his hands with a sickening, wet sound. He holds one up in the air, "I think… this will be a memorable time for you, to have almost… caught Captain—"

We ignore his monologue and pick up our hair piece with a sluggish slowness that makes the fire within burn with indignation. We are not ready for combat if we are so _weak_. "Do you know who I am, pirate filth?"

"Filth? Now you're just… well, no, should I?" He wags his eyebrows, as if he is able to escape at any time.

"Yes, you know who I am," we repeat gently.

"A nightmarish brat? A lucky waif?" His smiles would be charismatic, if I cannot see how yellow his teeth were. They are an affront to my modern sensibilities. But more than that, the accompanying laughter is just downright rude. "Look girlie, I'm just going to cut my losses and…"

Fire spews from his lips.

We see it coming, from the way he sucks his breath in and from the way his stomach extends. He gathers his _Qi_ in his belly and lets it all out. I do not see how this is an advanced technique, but we can tell it is much weaker than a normal firebender's blast.

Perhaps General Iroh's chief accomplishment is making such a 'dragon's breath' technique so powerful… yet all I can think of is how amazing that his beard is not burned off every time he uses that technique.

Perhaps the lightheadedness is affecting our cognitive ability, along with our ability to see straight, and…

Our hand reaches forward. We do not brush the fire aside with a gesture.

We do not block the heated breath that should be able to burn down the ship.

We do none of those conventional things.

We set an example.

Our hand clenches. We let Jolt see the fist pierce his cone of fire, grasping like the undead claw of a risen dead. The fire pours into our palm and dissipates with a soft hiss.

That is what they all see.

What they do not see is the heat leaving the flames as we will the fires inward and what makes the fires outward. All Jolt sees, and all the sailors and the girls see, is our fist killing the fire.

Stomp.

Stomp.

Stomp.

There is no other sound that rings in our ears than our own footfalls. We are just a half-stride away from Jolt now, and he too sits, stares, as if he has never met us before until this moment. His jaw is hanging half-open, a thin trickle of drool runs down his actually well-kept goatee.

His eyes widen.

Our fingers curl around his cheeks, though we cannot grasp his face entirely. We can shut his mouth and cover it, however.

"Do that again." Our breath is heavy, and we pant in between breaths. Each rise and fall of our chest is labored and hard. We grind our teeth together and try again, "Do that again, Jolt, and you will find your breath melting your mouth into slag. Your jaw will hang open as your muscles are consumed by fires that claw and crawl down your throat until they reach the pit of your stomach and consume you from within."

We let him go, and he slumps backwards.

A grimace of disgust washes over our features as we feel the slimy sensation on our palm. We wipe it on Jolt's clothes. Then we take our time and redo our hair, before finally placing that golden hairpiece back where it belongs, like a symbol and a crown of divine right.

"Remind me of Jeong Jeong…" He mutters under his breath, without looking up. We ignore it, for now. Association with a known traitor is at the bottom of the list that is topped with attacking the Princess's vessel. Dazedly, his head sways from side to side as he tries to pick himself up. The blood loss from the knives earlier must be weighing him down. "Who… who are you?"

We do not kneel.

We do not lower ourselves to his level.

We do answer him, by kicking him over onto his back and stepping onto his chest. He heaves weakly below us. This is a good feeling; it is the sensation of feeling a person's breath squashed under my foot and knowing that we can take it away at any time.

The golden flame glistens in the moonlight.

"You know who I am."

"… You're the Princess," He gasps. There is fear in his eyes now.

"By the glorious sun, you're right," We murmur into the wind. It carries to all the ears around us. This sensation, it feels like victory, but we cannot savor it. It tastes bitter. With a last heavy step to make sure he knows what sort of situation he has gotten himself into, we turn. "Don't try to escape, pirate. Girls, get this sod bound and gagged until we have time to play torture and interrogation. And where's my Agni-damned water?"


	16. The Proof of Weakness

16

Moving over and changing the colors of the ironclad into a merchant vessel does not take as much time as I originally imagined it might. It is a relatively painless affair, filled with pirates being thrown overboard and a lot of sailors grumbling. Still, the ironclad is nearly twice the size of the junk; I even have my own cabin now. The good captain knows he owes me for this, even if we have not ironed out the terms yet…

Well, it is better that we set the terms at port, where he is reminded of what he might lose if he does not agree. That and few men will disagree with a girl if she has a whole garrison at her call.

With that said and done, Mai and I settle in and I now turn to a more unpleasant affair of confronting the proof of my failures.

Our eyes set upon Private Lin again. This is the eleventh time. I am pretty sure she hasn't noticed us taking peeks at her, but does it matter if we are found out. Yes, why does it matter, when I am the Princess?

"I'm not suffering, my Princess," Private Lin interrupts our thoughts softly with a serene expression on her face.

"I…" We stutter. It must be because we stared too long, but we can't help but be embarrassed. But it's not embarrassment! It's not. "I'm not worried or anything! Really, I'm just…"

"If I may speak freely, Princess Azula," Lin murmurs at our expense, interrupting us as we are about to say our thoughts.

We allow it with a slight nod because a ruler must be gregarious and such.

"I will bear the scars with pride," She states with a palm pressed against her chest as if to swear upon some unknown spirit. Her gaze falls as her head slowly dips. "It is an honor to protect the future of our nation. I am loyal."

We turn away, unwilling to meet her eyes. We are not embarrassed or anything like that! It's just _our_ fault that she is suffering. There are no ifs or buts about it; our deficiency is why her once flat and smooth belly is now a hideous mess, and her shoulder is faring no better. Nevertheless, we keep our back straight and our hands behind our back in a dignified pose. "Yes, pride and honor. Loyalty is…"

The girls shift outside our door. They are listening in on our conversation, but we allow it even if it breaks protocol. We will have fewer and fewer opportunities to shape their impression of us as we continue down this route.

Mai looks up, her eyes questioning.

We make a cutting gesture horizontally, telling her not to worry about it. While we practice our heat senses to see our surroundings, Mai is simply more physically gifted and can hear the light shuffling outside.

"Loyalty shall be rewarded," We intone. Turning back to Private Lin, we add, "I will find a way to heal you, Lin."

She finally turns her gaze away, as if I have just reminded her of a hidden shame. "It is… I am not priority, Princess. I am not worthy. We have more urgent concerns."

But she cannot even convince herself in this, and we know better.

From the way the Fire Nation and people treat Zuko after his scarring, it is safe to say that most of those who are equal in rank will treat it as a shame, not something to be honored. Maybe the common people will buy it; they buy our propaganda well enough.

But I doubt the aristocracy will care. The Fire Nation is a strange beast. The average income and the median income are closely aligned, thus the standard of living for the average people is high enough that they do not question our rule. Even those in what should be a 'lower class' can tell you that things are better now than they were one hundred—or even fifty—years ago. Only those with too much wealth want to meddle in the affairs of their betters…

We do not reply to her after that, knowing that we must cultivate our reputation.

And we do not need to hold our silence for long. This conversation happens only after we have rested and watered ourselves, so as we are mostly in a good shape, we are fast approaching our destination. I will not bore you with details, but this is where Ty Lee should be.

Yes, it's probably best that I leave it at this.

We turn away again. It takes conscious effort to control our body to absolute perfection, and similarly so for emotions. Letting our thoughts wander has the effect of letting something through the cracks. We are not embarrassed, damn it!

Yes, it's probably best Lin doesn't see our face, as red as it is. We can only hope that the blushing goes away as we exit our quarters.

… This is so embarrassing.


	17. Arrival at Guangzhou

17

At least half of the island gathered for the giant, ironclad which towed a much smaller ship into port. It stood twice the height of any of the other junks which were pulled into the harbor at the sight of the pirate vessel. Technically, it was a former-pirate vessel, but markings on its hull were still clear as day under this sunny weather for anybody to see. For such a small place untouched by the war raging on in the world—aside from the rise in taxes—it stands to show the Fire Nation's propaganda machine kept people so ignorant of the truths of war that over one thousand people stood gawking in curiosity rather than running in fear. Guangzhou, like its Earth counterpart, is one of the smaller harbor islands that stood as one of the merchant gateways into the greater Earth Kingdoms. Many citizens of the Fire Nation stood around chattering, though from their fashions we could tell the influence of Earth merchants ran deep.

There were at least twenty guards standing by, but they were mostly there for show. They much have been well accustomed to keeping rowdy sailors from causing property damage, but what interested us was how they behaved. This must not be the first pirate vessel to pull in.

Guangzhou's culture is different from that of the Fire Nation, as it was an island that used to be ruled by an independent king before the island was annexed by the Fire Lord some time after our family had taken power. Because of its location, more people moved out of the island than in, even though it was a trade terminal for the Southern Water Tribe, the South-Western Earth Kingdoms, and for the southern islands of the Fire Nation. The reason for this was often multifaceted, but it could be concluded as 'lack of area for growth'. There have been talks of moving the port directly to the south western shores of the Earth Kingdom, though with General Fong and King Bumi at large in the region, that was just a far-away dream.

We were the first to step on the stairs as the ironclad docked. Of course, we had cleaned ourselves up beforehand, but materials were nowhere available as they should be. Besides, without Li and Lo over our shoulders, there was no reason for us to appear… pretty. We weren't a glass flower, after all.

Still, with the looted pirate cargo, we decided to approach with intimidation. Our heels clacked real loud as we swayed down the steps. A confident smirk was at our lips, knowing that we commanded the attention of the whole island.

One of Ty Lee's sisters was there to greet us. Remember that this island had its own culture? One of the things that this culture believed in was that families should always have at least five offspring. It was something that had migrated over from the southern Earth Kingdoms, since the Fire Nation had no ability to support such a growth of population (before the War, of course). Another funny aspect of their culture was their names; their family name came after their given name, as strange as it sounded. This particular sister was one year older than Ty Lee, which meant she was well within the age range for Azula to recognize her.

"The Lee Family greets Princess Azula," she intoned with an awkward bow. We had not announced we would be visiting, of course, but she knew us from the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.

At the sound of our name, more than one person gasped in the crowd. Yes, that sounded about right, we nodded in response to the greeting, but there was no reason for us to be formal. After all… this was just a friendly house visit. "Do lift your head, Kei Lee. Where is Ty Lee?"

"It's amazing how you can tell us apart," Kei Lee grumbles good-naturedly as she approaches, since we have given the silent permission. Her face wrinkles in a cute manner that reminds us of Ty Lee as she speaks of her sister, though it was no surprise since the seven sisters were practically identical in appearance. "Ty Lee is at home, trying to be a boy. Ugh."

"And your fascination with ships isn't? Color me surprised, because rock oil always did seem to do so much for the complexion." We studied her features before adding, "You always did have a smidge of it on your hands, no matter how you tried to clean it off."

"What? Where?" Kei Lee twirled about cluelessly.

Far be it for us to tell her that it was the way her dimples showed when she smiled; Ty Lee never had that. "Never mind that," We moved on, letting our eyes sweep over the crowd. As if by sheer force of will, our gaze caused every person to look away and seemingly get on with their jobs. Oh, we knew they'd still stare at us from the corner of their eyes.

That's natural, after all. We are Azula.

"Never mind how I can tell your sisters apart, why are you here?" Knowing how absentminded the Lee sisters all appeared to be, we know better than to let them linger on any single topic. It wasn't that they were dumb, they were all actually very intelligent. It was all about appearances after all, but sometimes an act can become the truth.

"I recognize that ship anywhere! Its engine is a beauty!" Kei Lee was about to rant on and on as Ty Lee would, but she stopped after remembering something. "But last time I saw it, it was a owned by a… well, a naughty man."

"It could be a different one."

"No, see, the way the hull is shaped? I was the one who had that fixed that way after…" She remembered herself then, "Oh! I'm sorry, Princess. W-Would you like to go see Ty Lee now?"

"Hm, I wasn't going to hide it," We spoke loudly. "This is a _former_ pirate vessel, belonging to a pirate by the name of Jolt. I'd _appreciate it_ if you would tell me more about his operations."

"… But, he had over two hundred men," Kei Lee asked. Unlike Ty Lee, most of her sisters were more orthodox in their behaviors, in accordance to what was acceptable for girls to do. Even if Kei Lee fiddled with engines, she still was primed up for marriage, which was what society expected of her. None of Ty Lee's sisters more than dabbled into combat, though I did hear good things about her mother.

"A master bender is more powerful than you know," We replied.

"B-But, Jolt was a…" She trailed off, realizing what she was saying. "Erm…"

"For now, take me up to your home. It's been too long since I've spoken with my friend." We knew the way well enough, so we walked ahead, leaving the stammering Kei Lee behind us. Even if we didn't, the largest, most opulent house of the harbor could only be the one belonging to the island's governor. "Afterwards, you can tell me all about the pirates of the region."

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

No one stood in our way.

Even if they did not know who we were, they knew better than to stop us. Whoever said it was lonely at the top didn't know how good it was to walk the road that all would follow. More than one person whispered at our passing.

For a pirate, Jolt was well known, in the harbor. While official policy is to never deal with pirates, I did not begrudge anyone of it when the gains outweighed the losses. With such an outfitted, disciplined crew, I had no doubts he was more than just a well known name in this region too.

But now that it's just as plainly spoken that I took out Jolt and his two hundred, I can see the tension in the air. I could taste the fear in their eyes. I could touch the trembling morsels around me, and they knew I could swallow them whole without pause.

Yeah, it felt great to be the most dangerous beast on the island.

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

We watched them shiver helplessly as we prowled. We've applied the iron fist. We felt great doing it.

Now it was time to apply the velvet glove.


	18. Arrival at Lee House

18

"Mai, you remember Kei Lee," We said after our entourage managed to catch up to us. Two of the girls followed Mai in full armaments of steel, clearly no longer taking any chances and thinking that since we were announced, they too must follow the most ceremonial of proceedings. The others stayed behind, since our growing war chest and our wounded officer were both still aboard the ironclad cruiser.

"Not really," Mai replied in her bemoaning sort of tone. With only her around, the world felt gloomier, so I thought perhaps it was best that we grab ourselves a Ty Lee as soon as possible.

"Aw, don't be like that," Kei Lee had regained some of that vigor that she and her sisters were known for. She hopped a step ahead of us, though it was clear that she wasn't a fighter. Even with her exuberance, there was no power behind the energy of the springs of her feet. "I remember you really well. Well, I remember your clique."

"Ah… the Royal Academy for Girls…" We sighed as a memory of Azula's filtering through our mind. Even so young, nostalgia already had attained its place within our heart of hearts.

Misunderstanding us completely, Kei Lee nodded in agreement. "Yes, it was quite an… experience. We used to have such a great time, met so many new people, and the lessons were—"

"I'm going to burn that place down the next time I visit," We say with a gentle smile, as if we were never interrupted.

Clack.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

"Ah…" Kei Lee wilted immediately. She was never as enduring as her sister too. "Yeah… you made quite an impression on us."

"Well? Do keep up, Kei Lee. We wouldn't want to keep your sister waiting, would we?" Our eyelashes flutter as we turn our gaze over our shoulder. Mai followed three steps behind Kei Lee. Our girls obviously had to follow behind her, because in ceremonial marches they had to be respectful, after all. Mai was obviously bothered that she didn't remember Kei Lee; why else would she not be walking at our side instead of behind us? Being as insightful as we were, we added, "Don't worry about not remembering rabble, Mai. Come, come."

She rolled her eyes and sighed.

Ah, good, old Mai.

Together, we climbed the one hundred and eight steps to the House Lee's manor. There was a spiritual and superstitious significance in the number one hundred and eight, but neither Azula nor I could quite remember where or when it was from.

Nevertheless, House Lee rose to power unlike many of the other Fire Nation's aristocracy, which was through appointment by the Fire Lord. Instead, they rose to prominence by sheer skill and great networking that led their ancestors to leadership roles since before their island was annexed. In such a case, keeping their connections allowed them to keep the governorship of the island, despite competitors in the Capital attempting to take their place. Their skill impressed the Fire Lord of the time enough to not squash them like the insect they were in the eyes of the throne, since their usefulness outweighed the potential gains of other scenarios.

It is why the House Lee kept such a commoner's name, Lee, rather than become rewarded with a noble house's name, such as Mai's household had. Because they were already nobility of such a stature, elevating them by bestowing a noble name would have been a wasted gesture and impractical besides. There were only so many names to bestow, after all.

The differences between Mai and Ty Lee did not end there. Even their ancestral homes were entirely different creatures. Or rather, Mai's family had only a house appointed them by the Fire Lord, as land in the Crown Lands are considered all the Fire Lord's—thus the most people really do is lease the land and the buildings upon them for 99 years. This has led to smaller buildings, such as the _Siheyuan_ which Mai's family lives in. Comparatively, Ty Lee's house was a giant fortress of a thing from a different age. It stood at least three stories in total from the stone battlements to its roofs and had an extensive basement… or dungeon, as we should call it.

It is wooden in structure mainly because that was how it was built, and I had no doubts the Lee family held pride in keeping the structure the way it originally was.

The fortress was a testament to their power within their demesne, as any rival could appear and torch it down with ease… except none could. While the Fire Lord held feudal power in a way that is reminiscent of a rather powerful constitutional and theocratic monarch, these smaller domains are slightly less developed. Here, the head of the Lee family would be Emperor and not a single person on the island could utter otherwise.

There were exceptions to that rule, of course.

Such an exception sauntered in casually through their main gates, which were left so arrogantly open. After all, we knew that they knew we were here. How dare they presume that we were here for them? How dare they presume to anticipate our arrival when we came unannounced?

We scanned the courtyard that greeted us. It was a wide square, with which the Lee family could use for teaching many a student in the fine art of _Qi Blocking_ and medicine. They were infamous for one and well known for the other.

Everyone was lined up to welcome us, except our friend.

How disappointed were we? We did not let it show.

Instead, we raked the faces and eyes with our sight and nodded with our sugared lips and spoke with our honeyed words before the family could even begin to kneel.

Clack. Clack.

And we came to a stop, casting a light upon the gathered many.

"Lord Qia Lee. Lady Zhu Lee. Bei Lee. Sun Lee. Emi Lee. Li Lee. Kei Lee, you did not warn me I was walking into a family reunion. Where is Ty Lee?"


	19. Interlude Qia Lee

Sicker than before. This snippet less coherent too. Sorry.

19

A ten year old girl isn't intimidating, in most cases. When you have a girl sitting on a chair too big for her, swinging her legs back and forth, this is quite the opposite of intimidating. In fact, a little girl playing with her hair is the last thing most people would draw fear from.

Magistrate Lee does not dare to raise his head from the ground, even as the girl bangs the heels of her boots so rudely against his throne. To the innocent bystander, it is but a chair. But to the citizenry of Guangzhou, this is the chair that Magistrate Lee receives guests and holds court in, and his ancestors before him. It is a symbol of power on this island.

But the great, wizen Magistrate does not dare look up into those golden eyes. He trembles as she hums.

Here is not just a little girl, but one of the most powerful firebenders in the world. The pirate lord Jolt is a manageable fool for theatrics. Give him attention and adulation, and he'll fall in line. His entire muster is only less than three hundred men, barely more than half of the garrison of the Magistrate's standing enforcers. It may be troublesome to displace the pirate lord, but he serves a purpose of holding the region's outlaws in line.

After all, should he toe the line, the Magistrate has far greater powers to call upon.

Yet it is not because this girl who singlehandedly destroyed the pirate's entire forces that makes her the center of attention and fear. Any room a true master of fire stands in is a room held hostage to their whims, this is so. It is also not that she has the entirety of the Fire Nation at her back as the Princess and the one many whispers say has strong backing in the courts as the true heir of the throne. This makes her important. It gives her power. But this alone is no reason to fear her.

Magistrate Lee has experienced many personalities enter his sight throughout his career. He isn't young as he used to be, but he is still clear sighted and sharp minded.

He knows danger when he sees it.

It is the small things that people don't notice that offset him. These are things he knows he needs to drill his daughters into recognizing, even though he knows that someone like Princess Azula appears only once in a hundred years.

She isn't sweating as she walks up the steps, despite the laborious stairs and the heated sun. Many career soldiers are the same, but when Qia Lee sees that even the wind does not displace a single hair from the Princess's head, he knows something is off.

The superstitious might believe her a spirit or an illusion. The mystics might believe her magical. Yet the realist in Lee knows what he sees: the wind itself is bending around the Princess to leave her utterly pristine. Her breathing is even, and yet the sun is not directly shining down on her. Kneeling close enough, he can feel cool air circulating around her feet, as if a shield of hot air keeps the coolness from leaving.

Yet this only is a testament to her ability as a bender.

No, this isn't why his entire being is focus on hiding the cold shivers running down his spine.

As she takes the final step, her eyes flicker. Once, twice… twelve times, until she has acknowledged every one of Magistrate Lee's wife's hidden clansmen. Other than the sound of her heels, her body and her clothes make not a single sound of motion. This is perfect motion control and special awareness, Lee knows. He has seen the master Jeong Jeong show off such perfect control of self and the Iroh display such awareness, but never both in the single being.

Then she moves, as if none of it has come to pass, as if everything she does is done subconsciously.

Magistrate Lee knows danger when he sees it.

He sees the way impossible loyalty burns in the eyes of the Princess's soldiers, who she had acquired only months beforehand. He sees the way the Princess's friend and advisor walks with similar grace. He also sees the pirate lord Jolt's most prized amulet dangling like some simple bauble at the Princess's wrist.

Qia Lee has heard before that the detractors of the Fire Lord sometimes murmur in their passing that the royal court is filled with vipers and monsters. He even sees proof in that as only this year, as the Prince Iroh is replaced by Ozai.

But the saying goes that speaking of something and comprehending something are two completely different things.

Here the proof stares down at him in unblinking, shining eyes.

'_They say that Ozai is a monster. But the real monster is the Princess._' He realizes. He can not, will not, and dare not voice such a thing, even to himself or to his wife.

He trembles and shivers, because he knows intellectually that no person should be as competent as the Princess, at the age of the Princess. He trembles and shivers not just from fear however, because the anticipation builds within him. Such excitement cannot be stopped.

How can he not be excited, when he knows that the Fire Nation will be in good hands? How can he even say such words at this moment, without sounding like a traitor?

For the first time in his life, Magistrate Lee realizes something impossible stands before him as proof of something he never believed in. '_With someone like her, and someone like her father, the final victory of the Fire Nation… it isn't just propaganda…_'

But he can't say these words now, not while her brother is Crown Prince.

There must be others like him in the court.

There is a reason such rumors spread even to a faraway place as Guangzhou.

"The Lee Family welcomes Princess Azula," He intones again. He says it with such vigor, as every fiber of his being believes in it. How can he not, when even just by being in the Princess's presence, he feels like the old flames within his heart—the flames that once burned when he believed he could change the world—now burned in him again?

The way the Princess watched him so knowingly, smirking as she does so, it's also as if she can see what he is thinking.

"I'll get straight to the point," The Princess says succinctly as she bluffs her nails. She turns away and the feeling is gone, but the tingling remains. "Give me Ty Lee and Kei Lee. I want them both."

As the Princess's gaze returns, Qia Lee feels like he has just been reintroduced to the sun.

How she burns!

But he is the Magistrate, and he has met many personalities. Few burn as brightly as the Princess, but this is not the first charismatic person he has met. "My Princess, this… may I have a moment with my wife?"

"Of course, such a decision cannot be made lightly," She nods as if it's the most natural thing in the world. But the tone of her voice sounds like she knows the outcome already.

"You cannot be thinking of it!" His lady wife whispers harshly the moment they exit the room.

"Zhu Lee…"

"None of our daughters care about my art as much as Ty Lee! She will inherit the _Qi_ blocking from me." She spins around, her fingers wringing the hem of her sleeves. His lady wife can see the Princess's competence, and she knows it is an uphill battle. Especially for a royal, who must always be used to getting their way, she must know how this will end. "I don't want my daughters to become… to become…"

"… Concubines, yes, I understand," Qia Lee finishes the sentence with a rub of his forehead. There was no easy way to tell, but there were rumors and then there were _rumors_.

It didn't help that the Princess seemed to have a distaste for males, even as soldiers in her unit.

"Pft," His lady wife punches him in the arm. "Men!" But there is shiver of doubt in her voice.

Such a thing was not unheard of, but rarely do those of the royal family deign to indulge in concubines. Usually, it is the hotheaded sons of the middle ranked aristocracy who do partake in such things. Those at the top cannot afford to without losing political capital, and those at the bottom cannot afford to without losing financial capital. Only those who are secure in their positions can do so without care.

And it has to be that, right? "It could be that she just wants some friends," He tries.

His wife gives him a glare that tells him he just said something stupid. "Were you in the room with me just now? Did you hear what she said? 'Give me Ty Lee and Kei Lee,' she said! 'I want them both,' she said!"

"Yes, yes, but she's too young for that sort of thing, you know," He rolls his eyes.

"… Yes, perhaps. But how can it be anything else?" His lady wife's brow wrinkles in confusion. "No, maybe she just wants their talents, _Qi _blocking is, after all… oh, if I wasn't thirty years younger, I would follow her to the ends of the world, with that… charisma."

"She has the right attitude for a leader. Reminds me of a more intense General Iroh," He nods. "But the Princess is smarter than the old dragon."

His lady wife rolls her eyes at him. "I can see that."

"Though, if they go, and something develops down the line…"

"It's not like we can control them when they're twenty," she smirks at him. "But I don't like it. Who will keep up with the family tradition? Li Lee doesn't have the talent for it, and Sun Lee is already at the age to notice boys."

"But in the end, we can't exactly stop the Princess," Qia Lee replies. Not with those burning eyes that see right through him. She'll get what she wants, one way or another. He nods, "Fine, we can… ask for something else."

He turns, and as he leaves, he hears his lady wife whisper, "I hope we aren't making a mistake. They are… so young, to get blood on their hands."

Qia Lee pauses, but his stride does not break.

'_I know._' He squares his shoulders. '_I hope so too._'

In the end, it wasn't as painful as he thought it would be, and the Princess was not against such a breach of etiquette.

"A boon?" The Princess's rosy lips curled. "This boon? Oh, I have a better idea than that. Give me one of your clan's instructors, Lady Lee, and we shall see to it as well."

* * *

><p>Reviews please, for the sake of the life of this story.<p> 


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